Message-Id: <199602062102.QAA11207@locke.ccil.org>
Date:         Tue, 6 Feb 1996 17:17:03 -0300
Reply-To: "Jorge J. Llambias" <jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: "Jorge J. Llambias" <jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR>
Subject:      Re: PLI: "except"
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
Status: OR
Content-Length: 1976

And:
>Goran to Xorx:
>> > That is important not only to the Irish.
>> > (Important to the Irish and to others as well, the unexpected part
>> > being that it is important to the others.)
>> .i la'edi'u vajni lo po'onai .ue se gugdrneire
>
>i lae diu vajni loi ge jea gi nae ue se guerxibernia

Several problems:

It is not grammatical. NAhEs can't be logically connected like that.

Even if it was grammatical, it wouldn't say what you want, because
{loi} would have scope over the scope of {ge}, so you would be
talking about people each of whom are both Irish and non-Irish.

Even if the scope of {ge} was over that of {loi}, you would then
be talking about some Irish and some non-Irish, not about all the
Irish.

Even writing it as:

la'e di'u vajni ge ro loi se gugdrxeire gi loi ue na'e se gugdrxeire

it still doesn't translate the English well, because the speaker need
not be surprised about it. The "against-expectations" component is not
against the expectations of the speaker (nor of the audience). It is
more a matter of relative unexpectedness, it is more unexpected that
it is important to others than to the Irish, but it need not be
unexpected at all in the absolute. It is perfectly reasonable to say
something like: "As everyone expected, that was important not only
to the Irish".

>i ge suo gi na ku ue ro da vuo poi lae diu vajni kea se guerxibernia

This one is also not grammatical. I don't really know how to do
the quantifier "some but not all". In any case, I don't think it
has to do with the speaker being surprised.

>> > That is important even to the Irish.
>> > (Important to the Irish and to others as well, the unexpected part
>> > being that it is important to the Irish.)
>> .i la'edi'u vajni lo .ue se gugdrneire ji'a
>
>i lae diu vajni loi ge nae gi jea ue se guerxibernia
>i ge na ku ue ro gi suo da vuo poi lae diu vajni kea se guerxibernia

I suppose here you meant to put the "ue" after "su'o", but the same
objections apply.

Jorge