From slobin@slobin.ran.pp.ru Fri Jan 09 13:05:09 2004 Return-Path: X-Sender: slobin.ran.pp.ru!slobin@slobin.ran.pp.ru X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (qmail 51851 invoked from network); 9 Jan 2004 21:05:07 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.167) by m18.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 9 Jan 2004 21:05:07 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO castle.ran.pp.ru) (213.134.196.14) by mta6.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 9 Jan 2004 21:05:06 -0000 Received: from castle.ran.pp.ru (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by castle.ran.pp.ru (8.12.3/8.12.3/Debian-6.6) with ESMTP id i09L54k5007445 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA bits=168 verify=OK) for ; Sat, 10 Jan 2004 00:05:05 +0300 Received: from slobin.UUCP (uucp@localhost) by castle.ran.pp.ru (8.12.3/8.12.3/Debian-6.6) with UUCP id i09L54Or007443 for lojban@yahoogroups.com; Sat, 10 Jan 2004 00:05:04 +0300 Received: by slobin.ran.pp.ru (dMail for DOS v2.07b7, 18Jul00); Sat, 10 Jan 2004 00:02:29 +0300 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Message-Id: <2.07b7.1BL5.HR8QG5@slobin.ran.pp.ru> Organization: Point of View Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 00:02:29 +0300 (MSK) X-Mailer: dMail [Demos Mail for DOS v2.07b7] Lines: 38 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-eGroups-Remote-IP: 213.134.196.14 From: "Cyril Slobin" Subject: shorthand for conversations X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=170537354 X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 21418 coi rodo There is often a need to express some conversation in lojban. Of course there is a straightforward way to do it: la .alis. cusku lu ko'a li'u .i la bob. cusku lu fo'a li'u which exactly corresponds to English: Alice said "this". Bob said "that". But in long conversation (imagine play text) the endless repeatition of all this "said" (lojban "cusku") quickly became boring. In English we can use a shorter notation then: Alice: this. Bob: that. Is it a way to obtain the same brevity in lojban? Due the restriction of audio-visual isomorphism, some cmavo should be used instead of colon. I believe it can be a new experimental cmavo of selmaho COI, indicating the producer of current sentence. Let us take, for example, {xi'e} (similar to {mi'e}). Then or example became somewhat like this: xi'e .alis. ko'a .i xi'e bob. fo'a An alternate approach is using a cmavo of selma'o ZOhU, which makes the syntax even closer to English, but seems for me less natural for lojban. Any comments? co'o mi'e kir. -- Cyril Slobin