Date: Sat, 6 Dec 1997 06:25:10 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199712061125.GAA23527@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: ni, jei, perfectionism X-To: jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan Status: O X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2532 X-From-Space-Date: Sat Dec 6 06:25:12 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU I just did a grep through various old texts (most more than 3 years old since I haven't extracted such texts from later mail). I did not find any instances of YOU Jorge using "jei" in perhaps 15 chunks of text. Likewise not in several chunks of Goran's text. I found usages of jei in Nick's texts, several of which could be taken as pertaining to an indirect question, and indeed this seems to have been part of the discussion that followed posting such texts. The discussion of his North Wind text for example seems to be where the necessity of having a means of marking indirect questions was identified, but it is not clear whether the lejei usages were considered examples of indirect questions. Someone would have to read the discussions to see whether there was any consensus. But I suspect that you will find that even here, if there was such discussion, it occurred in one of the endless arcane discussions that were already happenming, and no one brought the issue to the attention of Cowan or me, so that we never became aware of it. Certainly, until I read this thread more carefull than I do most, it never occurred to me that the usages which jei was translating were examples of indirect questions. This shows the weakness of such hypertechnical discussions. They end up having an effect on the language ONLY of those who plow through them, and only then if they happen to agree as to the analysis. But in any case, it does not appear that there has been a lot of usage of jei in any form since the whole issue of indirect questions was raised. It is possible that the final versions of Nick's text still contain jei as an indirect question because he did not agree with his critics' analysis, or because no one ever pointed out that jei was being used for an indirect question. It is also possible that he changed the usages - no way to tell from a grep. My conclusion is that this is an issue which has been discussed repeatedly in arcana, and no one has ever asked "Central" what our intent was before now, nor clearly reached any conclusions about jei. lojbab ---- lojbab lojbab@access.digex.net Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: ftp.access.digex.net /pub/access/lojbab or see Lojban WWW Server: href="http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/" Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.