Message-Id: <199709282326.SAA10068@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: absieber@eos.ncsu.edu Date: Sun Sep 28 18:26:42 1997 Sender: Lojban list From: Andrew Sieber Subject: Simple Lojban questions X-To: Lojban list To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 3129 X-From-Space-Date: Sun Sep 28 18:26:42 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Hello all- I haven't learned Lojban yet, but I plan to sometime in the near future. I've only spent a couple hours glossing over the reference grammar, and I've got a few questions about the language. In English, if I say, "The first time I met my wife was in high school," I am most likely referring to the person who is now my wife, but she was not, of course, my wife while I was in high school. However, the English sentence is strictly interpreted as meaning that I was already married to her before I even met her, and the first time I met her was in high school. Is it possible to say something ambiguous like the above in Lojban, or does Lojban force you to choose which meaning you intend? Why can't selbri be the first word in a bridi? If the selbri were first, then a listener could immediately know what relationship is being described, and could know what each sumti was being used for as the sentence was being heard. Allowing the selbri to be the last word in a bridi forces a listener to retain a potentially long string a sumti in short term memory until the selbri is finally heard, at which point the listener must mentally fit together all of the sumti just heard, placing a large burden on the listener for all but very short bridi. "skami pilno" can mean a user of computers, or it can mean a computer that is also a user. Why is this ambiguity allowed in a supposedly unambiguous language? Also, as I understand it, "sampli" has a definite meaning, unlike the ambiguous "skami pilno". Are such lujvo always unambiguous, or are they only unambiguous when they happen to be specifically defined in the dictionary? If they are always unambiguous, what is the method used to decide which "interpretation" will be correct? Does Lojban have separate words for the nucleus of an atom, the nucleus of a biological cell, the nucleus (kernel) of a computer operating system, etc? If so, does it have a general word that means "the center or middle part of something" that is not used to refer to the middle of any one specific thing? Does Lojban have separate words for the metric prefixes for base two and base ten numbers? Ie. in English, "kilo" can mean 1000 or 1024, "mega" can mean 1000000 or 1048576, etc, and the correct meaning must be figured out from the context. Does Lojban resolve this ambiguity? Is there any information anywhere about letter frequency in Lojban? The reason I ask is that I am currently considering learning the Dvorak style keyboard layout to replace qwerty (which I currently use), due to the fact that it is almost universally considered superior to qwerty in terms of typing speed, accuracy, and comfort. However, if I begin typing a lot of Lojban in the future, the Dvorak style may not be optimum; after all, Dvorak designed his layout to be optimal for the English language. Also, of course, another issue is the fact that Dvorak placed the letters h, q, and w in (relatively) easy to reach places on the keyboard, and Lojban does not use these letters at all. If anybody can provide answers, please do so. Thanks. --Andrew Sieber absieber@eos.ncsu.edu