Date: Fri, 31 Oct 1997 10:27:37 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710311527.KAA21673@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Robin Turner Sender: Lojban list From: Robin Turner Subject: terminators X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 533 X-From-Space-Date: Fri Oct 31 10:27:50 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Pulling together two strands - I suspect the acid test of whether children will be able to acquire Lojban as an L1 will be their ability to handle the terminators, which do indeed seem to be the most awkward part of both Lojban and computer languages. Does anyone know of any natlangs which employ terminators (not counting punctuation)? The closest I've found is Chinese, which employs a few terminator-like structures, e.g. "yinwei ... suoyi" for causation (normally rendered into English as "because ... therefore ..."). Robin