From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sat Mar 6 22:57:20 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI Received: (qmail 11883 invoked from network); 29 Jan 1997 00:03:35 -0000 Received: from segate.sunet.se (192.36.125.6) by xiron.pc.helsinki.fi with SMTP; 29 Jan 1997 00:03:35 -0000 Received: from segate.sunet.se by SEGATE.SUNET.SE (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <2.B894A334@SEGATE.SUNET.SE>; Wed, 29 Jan 1997 1:03:37 +0100 Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 20:59:42 -0300 Reply-To: "Jorge J. Llambias" Sender: Lojban list From: "Jorge J. Llambias" Subject: Re: _The Linguistics Wars_ X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Veijo Vilva Content-Length: 1192 Lines: 40 Message-ID: <4iEVeGZuDbM.A._jB.Q50kLB@chain.digitalkingdom.org> la djan cusku di'e > I am particularly taken with the wonderful sentence: > > Spiro conjectures Ex-Lax [an American brand of laxative] > > which looks grammatical but utterly senseless without its context, > which is: > > Does anyone know what Pat Nixon frosts her cakes with? The Lojban equivalent: la spiros smadi tu'a la ekslaks is never utterly senseless. Even without its context one naturally would ask la spiros smadi le du'u la ekslaks mo thus understanding well the first sentence. On the other hand, the quick translation: la spiros smadi la ekslaks would be utterly sensless no matter what the context. By the way, there is a related mistake in the refgrammar, in Chapter 5: > 9.5) mi jimpe loi nu'a su'i nabmi > I understand the-mass-of is-the-sum-of problems. > I understand addition problems. It should be "tu'a loi nu'a su'i nabmi". A fluent Lojban speaker should be as baffled by the tu'a-less sentence as an English speaker is when facing the conjectured laxative one. (You understand that addition problems are true about what?) Also in Chapter 5, example 6.16, "selpluka" should be just "pluka". Jorge