Date: Sun, 2 Nov 1997 08:25:30 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199711021325.IAA06924@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Ivan A Derzhanski Sender: Lojban list From: Ivan A Derzhanski Subject: Re: terminators X-To: The Lojban List To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2441 Lines: 53 Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~} wrote: > >>>>> "Ivan" == Ivan A Derzhanski writes: > Ivan> A terminator is a (frequently optional) right bracket > Ivan> that matches a required left bracket. If a postposition > Ivan> is a right bracket, what is the left? > > That's implicit -- analoguous the elided terminators in Lojban. But the point is that in Lojban the terminators, while optional, are not always elided. Robin Turner wrote: > Maybe it's a matter of perspective whether you regard the Y in a X .... > Y .... structure as a terminator for the first phrase, or the beginning > of the second phrase, or something to link the two. Most of the time there wouldn't be much room for argument. In the English _if ... then ..._ construction it is very obvious that _then_ introduces the consequent as opposed to terminating the condition or linking the two. > Funnily enough, while I was racking my brains trying to remember Chinese, > I ignored a really obvious one ... > > Je *ne* le crois *pas* > > If "pas" isn't a terminator here, I'd like to know what is! Hm. Actually, in modern colloquial French _pas_ is the true negative element and _ne_ is the optional ... initiator, or whatever you want to call it, with no semantic content of its own. Originally it was the other way around, of course. > A language which used pre- and post-positions at the > same time would certainly qualify, though. The problem is that as far as > I can see, whenever a language has a grammatical word before and after a > phrase, one of the pair is nearly always elidable. The best example of that that I can think of is ... yes, Chinese again, with its _zai4 ... shang4/xia4/..._-kind of circumfixes. And then there are the double articles of Swedish: _de goda hunderna_ `the good dogs', where both _de_ and _-na_ are plural definite articles. But it's going to be tough, I think, to find a natural language that is as happy *nesting* such constructions as Lojban is. -- `Meum est propositum in taberna mori; Vinum sit appositum sitienti ori: Ut dicant cum venerint angelorum chori "Deus sit propitius isti potatori".' (Archpoet of Cologne, `The Confession of Golias') Ivan A Derzhanski H: cplx Iztok bl 91, 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria W: Dept for Math Lx, Inst for Maths & CompSci, Bulg Acad of Sciences