From jimc@MATH.UCLA.EDU Fri Oct 22 10:36:48 2004 Return-Path: X-Sender: jimc@math.ucla.edu X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (qmail 95949 invoked from network); 22 Oct 2004 17:36:48 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.167) by m18.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 22 Oct 2004 17:36:48 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO simba.math.ucla.edu) (128.97.4.125) by mta6.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 22 Oct 2004 17:36:48 -0000 Received: by simba.math.ucla.edu (Postfix, from userid 500) id 9D51E1BF27; Fri, 22 Oct 2004 10:36:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by simba.math.ucla.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 928702F127 for ; Fri, 22 Oct 2004 10:36:47 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 10:36:47 -0700 (PDT) To: lojban@yahoogroups.com In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-eGroups-Remote-IP: 128.97.4.125 From: Jim Carter Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Help in examples ... X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=810565 X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 23241 On Fri, 22 Oct 2004, riderofgiraffes wrote: > >> Please can someone provide me with a few examples > >> where a sumti cannot be passed of as "just a complex > >> sort of noun"? > > I think that turns out not to be entirely the case. {blanu}, for > example, is not well described as a "verb" because it subsumes the > verb "to be". Actually, color words are a pretty standard example. "The sky blues" (a verb), i.e. it does the things that blue objects generally do involving modifying light. Thus the sky is properly in the referent set of the first argument of blanu, considered as a predicate. (Or to be over-pedantic about it, among the N-tuples which comprise the referent set of blanu, there are one or more (opportunity for pedantry squared here) in which the sky occupies the first slot.) In English (and all(?) Indo-European languages) we say "the sky 'is' blue", because of a pervasive convention that static properties are never verbs, and hence they need a special construction, for which "is" was co-opted. This is an area where Lojban deliberately tries to be different, to good effect in my opinion. That line of reasoning would probably drive your girlfriend up the wall. James F. Carter Voice 310 825 2897 FAX 310 206 6673 UCLA-Mathnet; 6115 MSA; 405 Hilgard Ave.; Los Angeles, CA, USA 90095-1555 Email: jimc@math.ucla.edu http://www.math.ucla.edu/~jimc (q.v. for PGP key)