From a.rosta@dtn.ntl.com Fri Oct 26 19:45:49 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: a.rosta@dtn.ntl.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_0_1); 27 Oct 2001 02:45:39 -0000 Received: (qmail 4362 invoked from network); 27 Oct 2001 02:45:39 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by l9.egroups.com with QMQP; 27 Oct 2001 02:45:39 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mta02-svc.ntlworld.com) (62.253.162.42) by mta2 with SMTP; 27 Oct 2001 02:45:39 -0000 Received: from andrew ([62.255.40.169]) by mta02-svc.ntlworld.com (InterMail vM.4.01.03.00 201-229-121) with SMTP id <20011027024537.JDEX20529.mta02-svc.ntlworld.com@andrew> for ; Sat, 27 Oct 2001 03:45:37 +0100 Reply-To: To: Subject: RE: [lojban] a construal of lo'e & le'e Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2001 03:44:48 +0100 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: <20011026220857.A2910@twcny.rr.com> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 From: "And Rosta" X-Yahoo-Profile: andjamin X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 11684 rob: > On Sat, Oct 27, 2001 at 01:44:36AM +0100, And Rosta wrote: > > I do want to wage war against excessive use of {le}. Doubtless it'll be > > futile, but still it might be worthwhile. The problem is that people are > > influenced by phonology when choosing 'default' forms, and hence 'le' and > > 'lo' feel more default than lei/loi/le'e/lo'e. Yet for singleton categories, > > 'le' and 'lo' are actually the least appropriate, involving redundant > > quantification, and even lei/loi wrongly imply the relevance of a > > distributive/collective distinction. So for singleton categories, le'e/lo'e > > should be the default. At any rate, I myself will now be ditching > {tu'odu'u} and > > start using {lo'e du'u} instead. > > Thank you for ditching {tu'odu'u} - using tu'o as an article seems to be > just a way to deliberately communicate nothing. Exactly! It was a way of avoiding communicating unnecessary information and having to decide which unnecessary information to communicate. But I now realize that lo'e will do this job. > I agree that {le} is overused, and I'm guilty of it myself - I tend to > say {lenu} when I have no specific event(s) in mind, and actually mean > {ronu}. I'm being more watchful for that now, and encourage others to do > the same. {ro} too requires great caution -- you have to check scopes are correct, & are you sure you really mean "every"... Certainly if you have no specifics in mind then a LE-series one is wrong. But ro v. lo v. loi v. lo'e still has to be decided. To me, lo'e is by far the safest option. --And.