From lojbab@lojban.org Tue Jun 13 01:52:14 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 31494 invoked from network); 13 Jun 2000 08:52:12 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m3.onelist.org with QMQP; 13 Jun 2000 08:52:12 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO stmpy-4.cais.net) (205.252.14.74) by mta1 with SMTP; 13 Jun 2000 08:52:12 -0000 Received: from bob (ppp25.net-A.cais.net [205.252.61.25]) by stmpy-4.cais.net (8.10.1/8.9.3) with ESMTP id e5D8qAf49783 for ; Tue, 13 Jun 2000 04:52:10 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from lojbab@lojban.org) Message-Id: <4.2.2.20000613042155.00b73460@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: vir1036/pop.cais.com@127.0.0.1 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.2.2 Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 04:53:11 -0400 To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Translating into lojban In-Reply-To: <8i41mg+svfr@eGroups.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 3029 At 01:10 AM 06/13/2000 +0000, zon9@hotmail.com wrote: >How can sentences of the form, (1) "To love evil is as confused as to >hate good" and (2) "Squares, by definition, have four sides", be >accurately translated into lojban? I could translate these, but I am trying to figure out what in particular about their form you are asking about. Better than that, let us look at putting them into a form of English so that you can see some underlying predicate structure that would allow you to put them into Lojban. That is the real job in translation, and it separates the problem of understanding the English (which I think is the challenge in these sentences) from the rather different challenge of learning the right Lojban grammar tools to translate a given grammatical structure (fairly easy). The second sentence is easy, or hard, as you prefer. It says "Squares have four sides." There is, inserted into this simple sentence, the metalinguistic comment "by definition". You need to answer the question "by whose definition" to continue. This takes more context than you have provided. If you are imposing this definition yourself, (not likely in the case of squares) Lojban has a evidential of definition (ca'e). Otherwise, you are using someone else's definition, which could be stated using ca'e or stated as a postulate (ru'a). In either case, you have a simple sentence, modified slightly to indicate why you are saying it. The first sentence is quite unlike the second one, which is why I ask what commonality of form you are seeing that causes you to ask how to translate "sentences of the form ...". In the English, we have a phrase "To love evil" with no subject, and another "To hate good" - these suggest the Latinate infinitive by the use of "to" but that is only because English has no way to grammatically move between metalinguistic levels in a single sentence as Lojban can. (Latin's infinitive morphology allows for two metalinguistic levels in one sentence). Then each of these two "infinitive phrases" are connected by the main verb (read "predicate" for Lojban "is as confused as" which could be more clearly stated as "to be equally confusing" with appropriate arguments labelled. In Lojban each of the "infinitive phrases" would be an abstraction bridi stuck into its own sumti, and the two sumti would then be related by the main bridi as I have restated it. Having outlined the solution, I will let you ask questions or try it yourself rather than actually look up all the words and page numbers in the book for you. And this will allow you to clarify for us what the issue is that you are trying to understand. lojbab -- lojbab lojbab@lojban.org Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org