From sentto-44114-2618-mark=kli.org@returns.onelist.com Tue May 09 09:22:32 2000 Return-Path: Delivered-To: shoulson-kli@meson.org Received: (qmail 23765 invoked from network); 9 May 2000 09:22:31 -0000 Received: from zash.lupine.org (205.186.156.18) by pi.meson.org with SMTP; 9 May 2000 09:22:31 -0000 Received: (qmail 22783 invoked by uid 40001); 9 May 2000 09:23:36 -0000 Delivered-To: kli-mark@kli.org Received: (qmail 22780 invoked from network); 9 May 2000 09:23:36 -0000 Received: from hm.egroups.com (208.50.144.92) by zash.lupine.org with SMTP; 9 May 2000 09:23:36 -0000 X-eGroups-Return: sentto-44114-2618-mark=kli.org@returns.onelist.com Received: from [10.1.10.38] by hm.egroups.com with NNFMP; 09 May 2000 09:23:35 -0000 Received: (qmail 32209 invoked from network); 9 May 2000 09:23:34 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m4.onelist.org with QMQP; 9 May 2000 09:23:34 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mail.camelot.de) (195.30.224.3) by mta1 with SMTP; 9 May 2000 09:23:34 -0000 Received: from robin.camelot.de (uucp@robin.camelot.de [195.30.224.3]) by mail.camelot.de (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id LAA52913; Tue, 9 May 2000 11:22:59 +0200 (CEST) Received: from oas.a2e.de (uucp@localhost) by robin.camelot.de (8.9.3/8.9.3) with UUCP id LAA52909; Tue, 9 May 2000 11:22:59 +0200 (CEST) Received: from localhost by wtao97 via sendmail with esmtp id for ; Tue, 9 May 2000 09:19:57 +0000 (/etc/localtime) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #1 built 1999-Nov-8) X-Sender: phm@wtao97.oas.a2e.de To: Ivan A Derzhanski Cc: The Lojban List In-Reply-To: <3917CA1B.59FA@math.bas.bg> Message-ID: From: PILCH Hartmut MIME-Version: 1.0 Mailing-List: list lojban@egroups.com; contact lojban-owner@egroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list lojban@egroups.com Precedence: bulk List-Unsubscribe: Date: Tue, 9 May 2000 09:19:57 +0000 (/etc/localtime) Subject: Re: [lojban] Lojban / Most translated Web Page Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > > >There are other examples of silly centrifugal order in German, > > >e.g. "S 828 BGB", which is just an abbreviation for something > > >like "Section 828 of the Civil Law". > > "S 828 BGB" actually looks extremely unGerman: if there is anything > that the German language (and in particular its scholarly style) are > notorious for, it is their long centripetal compounds that Mark Twain > had such a hard time with. centripetal compounds are just as long in English, but they are not accented at the beginning. In German writing compounds together is a way of indicating where the accented beginning is. On the whole, the centripetal (tanru) model is less pervasive in German than in English. > > >Nobody can argue that it suits human thinking well to first > > >dive down into a section and then look up and see what body > > >of law we are talking about. > > Certainly not. Otoh, that form can be handy if the hearer is very > likely to already know which body of law is being talked about. > Which is just the case with dates of {lo zi fasnu}. Even there I don't find it handy. If I already know that we are talking about BGB, then "S 828" is enough. Otherwise prepending works just as well, and it never hurts. When I read addresses like "S 828 BGB" or "20.5.1999", I find that I have to mentally transpose them before I can adequately process (e.g. compare, memorise etc) them in my mind. The centripetal form is mnemotechnically superior imho. Mnemotechnical requirements are quite similar to computing requirements. This is what I meant by saying that URLs are "human language". They are made in view human mnemotechnical needs, while IP addresses are not. > > I agree that they probably evolved out of the language's grammar pattern, > > but you persist is seeing tanru as the more basic grammar pattern of > > Lojban, and dates as being tanru, whereas the basic unambiguous structure > > is the restrictive clause/phrase, or the added specified place on a > > predicate [...]. Both of these tend to be added to the end in Lojban [...]. > > That may be because of the structural difference between tanru and > phrases containing restrictive clauses: in the former the components > are simply juxtaposed, whereas the latter employ special connectives. > Since what cmavo (in lojban) or punctuation (elsewhere) appears between > the numbers in dates serves only to separate them, they do end up > looking more like tanru. > > That is, `05/09' looks more like `gold ring' than `ring of gold', > because the slash is more like a space than like the preposition > `of' -- all it does is separate the digits. Also, all addresses can be very well represented as tanrus, and this is likely to occur in conversation day 4 . which day 4 ? month 5 day 4 . which month 5 day 4 ? year 1999 month 5 day 4 . In Lojban the default way of doing this is tanru expansion, with a special particle 'be' available for transposition. I have not seen any description of a Lojban grammar for address expressions, and I also don't know how to express the naming relation between "day" and "4". It needn't bee a naming relation, it can also be a ordinal relation like "4th day". Or a diffuse relation like "4 day" as in Chinese "si4 ri4". Diffuse relations (freedom from specificness requirements that are not caused by the idea one wants to convey but by the constraints of the language system) seem most Lojbanic to me. -phm ------------------------------------------------------------------------ You have a voice mail message waiting for you at iHello.com: http://click.egroups.com/1/3555/3/_/17627/_/957864215/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscribe@onelist.com