From LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Sat Mar 6 22:56:56 2010 Reply-To: Julian Pardoe LADS LDN X1428 Sender: Lojban list Date: Thu Jan 16 10:09:20 1997 From: Julian Pardoe LADS LDN X1428 Subject: Re: Lojban's imperfections? To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu X-UIDL: 9c8afd8993759c5281938aee4efd2b97 X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1896 X-From-Space-Date: Thu Jan 16 10:09:20 1997 X-From-Space-Address: - Message-ID: On Thu Dec 12 Christian Richard wrote: > 6. To learn Lojban, I would have to master the order, number, and > semantics of arguments associated with each predicate. I have noticed > that this dependency on order is also very much like the usual order in > English. Are there again reasons why this order is not culturally neutral > and wasn't originally determined randomly instead of matching the natural > order the arguments would have in English? Or is this a direct import > from the predicate calculus? Long ago, when I first read about Loglan, I thought of writing a spoof article "The Place System of Esperanto", explaining how Esperanto has a place system like that of Logban (Lojlan?) but with certain clever enhancements, such as handy little mnemonic markers. Thus in li instruas al la infanoj pri historio 'al' and 'pri' are mnemonic place markers which (a) remind the listener of the role of the arguments and (b) relieve both speaker and listener of the task of remembering the order of arguments, other than the first (which has a special zero marker). What a neat and clever idea these markers are, hey! I was then going to talk about the fact there is alternative, shirter form of marker that can be used to mark one of the 'secondary' arguments. Using this we could replace 'al' or 'pri' by the alternative marker: li instruas la infanojn pri historio li instruas historion al la infanoj I was also thinking of mentioning the place-converter "-igh-" that brings the secondary argument to the first place. X amas lin -> li amighas -- jP -- PS: You understand that "as", "o" etc. are Esperanto shmavoj and are written together with other words only by convention. What we really have is: li instru as la infan o j n pri histori o (This is geting like a spoof of some of the more way-out approaches to the grammar of Eo!)