From sentto-44114-3373-962564968-mark=kli.org@returns.onelist.com Sun Jul 02 19:07:59 2000 Return-Path: Delivered-To: shoulson-kli@meson.org Received: (qmail 8968 invoked from network); 2 Jul 2000 19:07:57 -0000 Received: from zash.lupine.org (205.186.156.18) by pi.meson.org with SMTP; 2 Jul 2000 19:07:57 -0000 Received: (qmail 15796 invoked by uid 40001); 2 Jul 2000 19:09:30 -0000 Delivered-To: kli-mark@kli.org Received: (qmail 15793 invoked from network); 2 Jul 2000 19:09:29 -0000 Received: from c3.egroups.com (207.138.41.143) by zash.lupine.org with SMTP; 2 Jul 2000 19:09:29 -0000 X-eGroups-Return: sentto-44114-3373-962564968-mark=kli.org@returns.onelist.com Received: from [10.1.10.38] by c3.egroups.com with NNFMP; 02 Jul 2000 19:09:27 -0000 Received: (qmail 5430 invoked from network); 2 Jul 2000 19:09:28 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by m4.onelist.org with QMQP; 2 Jul 2000 19:09:28 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO hp.egroups.com) (10.1.2.220) by mta1 with SMTP; 2 Jul 2000 19:09:28 -0000 X-eGroups-Return: Ti@fa-kuan.muc.de Received: from [10.1.10.122] by hp.egroups.com with NNFMP; 02 Jul 2000 19:09:27 -0000 To: lojban@egroups.com Message-ID: <8jo40u+g7j0@eGroups.com> User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.82 X-Mailer: eGroups Message Poster From: "=?iso-8859-1?q?Alfred_W._Tueting_(T=FCting)?=" 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: Sun, 02 Jul 2000 19:09:18 -0000 Subject: [lojban] A rose is a rose is a rose... Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Although knowing that Lojban was invented to prove the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (hence avoiding the use of the verb "to be"), up to the "botpi" discussion I was not aware of the real linguistical consequences followed in Lojban (and still am not sure about this). My idea had been that Lojban just is lacking the verb "to be" in all its forms like this is the fact in ancient ("classical") Chinese or (partly) Russian and Hungarian language (e.g. Kung-tzu Lu ren ye, "on tchielovek" or "az ember nem allat"). Yet, I don't think that this infact can avoid "tagging" people, since even the Chinese phrase states that Confucius *was/is/forever will be* a man from Lu. So I'd imagine the only way could be to "verbalize" nouns like in some Native American idioms, where a statement like, say, "there are houses yonder" could be expressed as "it is housing far over there" - /tu zdani/ or maybe simply /vu zdani/ (?). Thus the idea could be expressed that something like a house, tree etc. is somehow emanating its very being in a continuous ('materialized') stream - hence existing as long as it is active, grammatically similar to 'the rain' (in many languages as English, German, French, Italian, Romanian etc. - and maybe Hungarian too): "it is raining", "es regnet", "il pleut", "piove", "ploua" - "esik"(=it falls, namely "it=the falling"). Since Benjamin Lee Whorf dealt a lot with Native American idioms, he e.g. was interested in categories of discriminating nouns and verbs: he found that in Hopi language 'referents' (events) of longer duration are classified as nouns (e.g. house, man) whereas those of short duration as verbs (e.g. lightning, wave); and in the Nootka language almost all words are grammatically verbs (s. above). >From this, I now tend to assume that all selbri (gismu etc.) grammatically are verbs rather than nouns, right? If this is the fact, the well-known English phrase "A rose is a rose is a rose..." (unusual in English grammar and hence its sense not quite obvious at first glance) in Lojban simply could be "lo rozgu cu rozgu" or even just "rozgu". Now, back to /botpi/: if it is right that a /botpi/ is not an (actual) /botpi/ with its X2 unplaced (not just undefined), isn't its non- existence still more obvious (and comprehensive) when its 3rd place X3 is /noda/? A /botpi/ that doesn't "glass" (plastic, ceramic etc.) is not even a potential /botpi/ (not even a virtual one in one's mind). So, I think that /botpi/ (bottling) is only possible if this 'action' performs with all qualities of /botpi/ i.e. with all places set with /da/ (just like rain is no longer rain when it stops raining). What is your opinion? .aulun. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ High long distance bills are HISTORY! Join beMANY! http://click.egroups.com/1/4164/4/_/17627/_/962564968/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscribe@onelist.com