Date: Tue, 18 Nov 1997 09:53:59 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199711181453.JAA03312@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: And Rosta Sender: Lojban list From: And Rosta Organization: University of Central Lancashire Subject: Re: terminators and bilingualism X-To: LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1475 X-From-Space-Date: Tue Nov 18 09:54:06 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Ivan, who knows much more about heterogeneous languages than I do, replies: > > But first could we agree among ourselves what would count as a > > terminator/initiator? > > > > As a first go, without crafting the formulation, I would suggest: > > > > [X Y Z] > > > > where either X, Y or Z is the head of the phrase, and X must > > be the first word in the phrase and Z must be last word, though > > they needn't be obligatory. > > > > Does that get to the essence of it? > > Sounds good to me. It seems to describe circumpositions, in any case, > and those are the closest thing to Lojban's bracketed constructions > that I've seen in natlangs. > > > However, it occurs to me that if an XP, which is head-initial, > > systematically selected a YP, which is head final, then you > > would get [X [[Z] Y]]. > > True. As in Chinese (where there seem to be many such constructions): > _[zai4 [NP shang4]]_ `above NP' (lit. `(be(ing))_at NP('s) top'). > > > Such an analysis is available for Lojban terminators, and perhaps what > > really marks out Lojban is the pervasiveness of the construction type. > > And also the fact that when such constructions are nested, the repeated > brackets aren't readily elided. So is there really any point in posting a query to Linguist? It seems that we agree that natlangs do have analogues of the Lojban terminators, but that we believe that no language makes nearly such extensive or systematic use of them as Lojban does. --And