From a.rosta@ntlworld.com Fri Nov 23 12:20:47 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: a.rosta@ntlworld.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_0_1); 23 Nov 2001 20:20:45 -0000 Received: (qmail 22562 invoked from network); 23 Nov 2001 20:20:45 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.167) by m8.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 23 Nov 2001 20:20:45 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mta07-svc.ntlworld.com) (62.253.162.47) by mta1.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 23 Nov 2001 20:20:47 -0000 Received: from andrew ([62.253.85.83]) by mta07-svc.ntlworld.com (InterMail vM.4.01.03.13 201-229-121-113) with SMTP id <20011117230344.HHDV25045.mta07-svc.ntlworld.com@andrew> for ; Sat, 17 Nov 2001 23:03:44 +0000 To: Subject: RE: [lojban] Auxlang sentences and lujvo Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2001 23:03:01 -0000 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 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20011116141452.00b5e6c0@pop.cais.com> From: "And Rosta" X-Yahoo-Profile: andjamin X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 12244 Lojbab: > >1. The big house was full of books. > > Actually, on thinking about the many replies that have been posted, this > sentence is more problematic than it appears. Compare with: > > "The big cup was full of water". > le barda kabri pu culno loi djacu > > It seems unlikely that the English "is full of" when referring to books > means that same as "is full of" when referring to water. Rather, we would > tend to use the phrase merely to mean that the house contains an > extraordinarily large quantity of books. The quantity is large relative to the size of the house. Fullness can be relative to the physical capacity of the container or to the functional capactity of the container. > It was interesting that every single Auxlang translation of the sentence > mimicked the English idiomatic usage. I don't agree that it's idiomatic, but most Lojban translations from English are rather slavish. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, because natlangs embody a lot of Good Sense. --And.