From lojban+bncCOzcnrWBFBDPiYjeBBoEp6GXpw@googlegroups.com Sun Apr 11 10:20:44 2010 Received: from mail-gx0-f198.google.com ([209.85.217.198]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1O10pp-00011K-1o; Sun, 11 Apr 2010 10:20:44 -0700 Received: by gxk22 with SMTP id 22sf1360799gxk.4 for ; Sun, 11 Apr 2010 10:20:27 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=domainkey-signature:received:x-beenthere:received:received:received :received:received:received-spf:received:mime-version:sender :received:in-reply-to:references:date:received:message-id:subject :from:to:x-original-authentication-results:x-original-sender :reply-to:precedence:mailing-list:list-id:list-post:list-help :list-archive:x-thread-url:x-message-url:list-subscribe :list-unsubscribe:content-type; bh=g+kOoLysHj6gw9lNlq39xaEyGla4NHhlNA6LddQdghE=; b=XHgk+fjfd595Z3NSa7zV9rGUJOVAdP3ERp++mJU5uoH7fIpMgqZWGtj8GWgUfYH6XS SBeS0sok3ki+T/CRqy+i9p4cgGTq5Bpa9O9bhpgjw2F3OhEP38qGhLpTnjJtQf4FVG7S NyFH8EFixLQpZQnL63R+ZHWjT5y1IIlPzHFL0= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=x-beenthere:received-spf:mime-version:sender:in-reply-to:references :date:message-id:subject:from:to:x-original-authentication-results :x-original-sender:reply-to:precedence:mailing-list:list-id :list-post:list-help:list-archive:x-thread-url:x-message-url :list-subscribe:list-unsubscribe:content-type; b=hudqaPr6coh0JWrWoMNG6WBye+W/+R3dRcEcEYs1S1iTwfoWiK+uELB2WQvA7T9bON woRkmcA8XojfzafTrOqnNklJlbCi6iLzO0Ra+6bL86qA6iGkE11OlcldNLkspIO3x/nL ejpSJm05T9N16HDy0rANxYU0NfVJPixL4A3uI= Received: by 10.90.125.12 with SMTP id x12mr479650agc.27.1271006415287; Sun, 11 Apr 2010 10:20:15 -0700 (PDT) X-BeenThere: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.86.126.32 with SMTP id y32ls297018fgc.0.p; Sun, 11 Apr 2010 10:20:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.87.69.26 with SMTP id w26mr140370fgk.27.1271006413100; Sun, 11 Apr 2010 10:20:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.204.18.79 with SMTP id v15mr194185bka.15.1270990372653; Sun, 11 Apr 2010 05:52:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.204.18.79 with SMTP id v15mr194184bka.15.1270990372571; Sun, 11 Apr 2010 05:52:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail-qy0-f200.google.com (mail-qy0-f200.google.com [209.85.221.200]) by gmr-mx.google.com with ESMTP id h3si3963060bke.4.2010.04.11.05.52.50; Sun, 11 Apr 2010 05:52:51 -0700 (PDT) Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of pascal.akihiko@gmail.com designates 209.85.221.200 as permitted sender) client-ip=209.85.221.200; Received: by qyk38 with SMTP id 38so3374748qyk.5 for ; Sun, 11 Apr 2010 05:52:50 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Sender: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.229.45.20 with HTTP; Sun, 11 Apr 2010 05:52:50 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: References: <4BBE188B.8070807@lojban.org> <4BC0B3CE.5040005@gmail.com> <8CCA6F068EC8210-1A3C-934F@webmail-d035.sysops.aol.com> <132833F1-0520-4DCB-BDDE-312E4376FCDA@gmail.com> <8CCA70C59E211E4-1AB8-1DCB3@Webmail-d124.sysops.aol.com> <324B71F9-826E-4042-BBEE-00B92F2315E4@gmail.com> Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2010 13:52:50 +0100 Received: by 10.229.221.14 with SMTP id ia14mr3965439qcb.8.1270990370443; Sun, 11 Apr 2010 05:52:50 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: Subject: Re: [lojban] Response ro Robin's "Essay on the future of Lojban" From: tijlan To: lojban@googlegroups.com X-Original-Authentication-Results: gmr-mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of pascal.akihiko@gmail.com designates 209.85.221.200 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=pascal.akihiko@gmail.com; dkim=pass (test mode) header.i=@gmail.com X-Original-Sender: pascal.akihiko@gmail.com Reply-To: lojban@googlegroups.com Precedence: list Mailing-list: list lojban@googlegroups.com; contact lojban+owners@googlegroups.com List-ID: List-Post: , List-Help: , List-Archive: X-Thread-Url: http://groups.google.com/group/lojban/t/33d26e8385fed297 X-Message-Url: http://groups.google.com/group/lojban/msg/d5bfdd91b2e2fa25 List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=00163628497a8b14650483f581a9 --00163628497a8b14650483f581a9 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable 2010/4/11 Jorge Llamb=EDas > On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 10:06 PM, tijlan wrote: > > Also worth > > noting is that, unlike Esperanto, Lojban isn't overtly specific about i= ts > > morphosyntactic alignment; while Esperanto is explicitly > > nominative-accusative, Lojban is not. (In fact, I'm not sure which Lojb= an > > belongs to. Could it be the active-stative?) > > I agree with your other points, but why do you say Lojban is not > nominative-accusative? It seems to me that it is exactly that: the > single case of intransitive predicates (the x1-case) is treated > exactly like one of the cases of transitive predicates (the x1-case > again) > For instance: *senci* has only one argument, so it's an intransitive predicate with a subject. *sumne* has two arguments, one of which is defined as "experiencer= " and as the x1, but it's not unambiguously the agent (the participant in a situation that carries out the action in this situation) so long as the x2 can be considered as the primary cause of the experience of smelling but ye= t not unambiguously as the agent either from a common viewpoint. According to Wikipedia, the linguist David Dowty suggests ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_%28grammar%29) that, in * His energy surprised everyone*. , *His energy* is the agent, "even though it does not have most of the typical agent-like qualities such as perception, movement, or volition". From that viewpoint, it would be reasonable to say *sumne*'s x2 is the agent. In fact, the gimste offers varying definitions in terms of the arguments' roles: a. *x1 smells/scents x2* b. *x2 smells/has odor/scent to observer x1* And the interpretation of cases starts to appear even more undecided/speaker-dependent when we take into account the following situation. If native English speakers see *da sumne de*, they would probably generally take the definition (a) and consider the x1 nominative: *[NOMINATIVE] [verb]** [ACCUSATIVE]* The same for native Japanese speakers, despite their different word order: *[NOMINATIVE] [ACCUSATIVE] [verb]* But what if native Basque speakers see *da de sumne*? It syntactically corresponds to the Basque ergative allignment: *[ERGATIVE] [ABSOLUTIVE] [verb]* That is, they would by tendency see *de* (*sumne*'s x2) in the same way tha= t they see an intransitive predicate's subject like the x1 of *blabi*; *da blabi* syntactically corresponds in Basque to *[ABSOLUTIVE] [verb]* And it's the same for predicates the x1 of which appears in the English version of the gimste as nominative and the x2 as accusative, such as *visk= a *: *x1 sees/views/perceives visually x2 under conditions x3 * For Basque speakers, this x2 would naturally appear as absolutive and they would treat it in the same way as they would treat an intransitive predicate's x1 and describe it as such if they ever make a Lojban-Basque dictionary. Wikipedia has a Basque example of *The man saw the boy.* ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergative%E2%80%93absolutive_language#Morpholog= ical_ergativity ): * Gizonak mutila ikusi du. [gizon-ak] [mutil-a] [ikusi du] [man-ERG] [boy-ABS] [saw] * , which naturally corresponds to *[lo nanmu] [lo nanla] [pu viska]* Unlike Esperanto, Lojban does not morphologically (and syntactically, for that matter) mark cases, so the interpretation is usefully up to the listener/reader. > and for transitive predicates the x1-case is the one that > usually corresponds to the agent, just like the subject case in > nominative-accusative. Whether or not a transitive predicate's x1 is the agent does not at least i= n the above examples affect Basque speakers' interpretation of the x2-case; * gizonak* is the agent, but it's of ergative case, and *mutila* of absolutiv= e case. And there is nothing which would prohibit them from interpreting *lo nanmu lo nanla pu viska* in the same native scheme of theirs. Even if *lo nanmu* is explicitly marked as the agent with *gau*, they would associate i= t with their native eargative marker *-ak*, while native Japanese speakers would associate it with their nominative marker *-ga*. > Active-stative would require that some intransitive verbs have an > x1-case only while others have an x2-case only, which is never the > case (unless you are thinking of things like "zi'o broda", but I doubt > it's fair to use such unusual cases for the classification). > For one thing, Lojban has certain characteristics of fluid-S, a subtype of active-stative. Wikipedia defines fluid-S ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_stative) as: *[...] the marking of the intransitive argument is decided by the speaker based on semantic considerations. That is, **for any given intransitive ver= b the speaker may choose whether to mark the subject as agentive or patientive, with agentive marking implying a degree of volition or control, and patientive implying lack of volition or control, suffering, or sympathy on the part of the speaker. * Consider single-argument intransitive predicates like *sipna*. In *da sipna= *, *da*, unmarked, is either agentive or patientive: when *da ri'a sipna*, it'= s patientive; when *da segau sipna*, it's agentive. It's the same for multiple-argument intransitive predicates like *sakli*. I= n *da sakli de*, *da*, unmarked, is again either agentive or patientive: when *da ri'a sakli de*, it's patientive; when *da segau sakli de*, it's agentive. Also,* tu'a* and *jai* can make the intransitive argument either the agent or the object of a transitive verb -- the arbitrary marking of which is wha= t is commonly defined as the main feature of active-stative. > > There are more to the similarity between Lojban and Japanese, but I'm > having > > difficulty putting it into English. For one thing, briefly, the > distinction > > between the subject, object, and complement in Japanese is not as > important > > as in English, which has led some notable Japanese linguists to suggest > that > > every verb argument in this language is basically a complement of equal > > significance in its relation to the predicate, which sounds like what > terbri > > are to its selbri in Lojban. > > I would agree that the distinction is less important than in English, > but there is still a distinction. The x1-case especially has very > distinct properties compared with the other cases, and the x2-case to > a lesser extent also has some special properties with respect to the > rest. > They may have distinct properties, but the point is that one argument is no= t more significant than the others. *viska*'s x1 is not more important than its x2, while in English *see*'s x1 (the subject) is more important than it= s x2 as evidenced by such facts as that *I see that*. can be reduced to *I see.* but not formally to *See that*. In Lojban and Japanese, *mi viska | watasi-wa miru*, *viska ra | sore-o miru* and *viska | miru* are equally valid. (Such ellipsis is also possible in some European languages like Spanish and Polish, but they differ from the pair in question in that their arguments inflect.) English prioritises the subject and formally requires its presence in an indicative sentence, as in *It rains.*, which cannot formally be *Rains.* Also: as I attempted to explain above, the x1-case as well as the x2-case i= n Lojban are by default indefinite, user-dependent. So I don't think one can objectively prescribe the properties of the x1/x2 as a definite representation of one grammatical case. I'm not an expert, so I might have said some stupid things, in which case I would be happy to be corrected and educated. mu'o mi'e tijlan --=20 You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "= lojban" group. To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegrou= ps.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban= ?hl=3Den. --00163628497a8b14650483f581a9 Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
2010/4/11 Jorge Llamb=EDas <= ;jjllambias@gmail.com>
On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 10:06 PM, tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com> wrote:
> Also worth
> noting is that, unlike Esperanto, Lojban isn't overtly specific ab= out its
> morphosyntactic alignment; while Esperanto is explicitly
> nominative-accusative, Lojban is not. (In fact, I'm not sure which= Lojban
> belongs to. Could it be the active-stative?)

I agree with your other points, but why do you say Lojban is not
nominative-accusative? It seems to me that it is exactly that: the
single case of intransitive predicates (the x1-case) is treated
exactly like one of the cases of transitive predicates (the x1-case
again)

For instance:

senci has only = one argument, so it's an intransitive predicate with a subject. sumn= e has two arguments, one of which is defined as "experiencer"= and as the x1, but it's not unambiguously the agent (the participant i= n a situation=20 that carries out the action in this situation) so long as the x2 can be con= sidered as the primary cause of the experience of smelling but yet not unam= biguously as the agent either from a common viewpoint. According to Wikiped= ia, the linguist David Dowty suggests (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_%28grammar%29) that, in

=A0His energy surprised everyone.

, His energy is = the agent, "even though it does not have most of the typical agent-lik= e qualities=20 such as perception, movement, or volition". From that viewpoint, it wo= uld be reasonable to say sumne's x2 is the agent. In fact, the g= imste offers varying definitions in terms of the arguments' roles:

=A0a. x1 smells/scents x2
=A0b. x2 smells/has odor/scent t= o observer x1

And the interpretation of cases starts to appear e= ven more undecided/speaker-dependent when we take into account the followin= g situation.

If native English speakers see da sumne de, they would probably = generally take the definition (a) and consider the x1 nominative:

= =A0[NOMINATIVE] [verb] [ACCUSATIVE]

The same for nativ= e Japanese speakers, despite their different word order:

=A0[NOMINATIVE] [ACCUSATIVE] [verb]

But what if native Ba= sque speakers see da de sumne? It syntactically corresponds to the B= asque ergative allignment:

=A0[ERGATIVE] [ABSOLUTIVE] [verb]<= br>
That is, they would by tendency see de (sumne's x2) i= n the same way that they see an intransitive predicate's subject like t= he x1 of blabi; da blabi syntactically corresponds in Basque = to

=A0[ABSOLUTIVE] [verb]

And it's the same for predicat= es the x1 of which appears in the English version of the gimste as nominati= ve and the x2 as accusative, such as viska:
=A0
=A0x1 sees/= views/perceives visually x2 under conditions x3

For Basque speakers, this x2 would naturally appear as absolutive a= nd they would treat it in the same way as they would treat an intransitive = predicate's x1 and describe it as such if they ever make a Lojban-Basqu= e dictionary. Wikipedia has a Basque example of The man saw the boy.= (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergative%E2%80%9= 3absolutive_language#Morphological_ergativity):

=A0Gizonak mutila ikusi du.
=A0[gizon-ak] [mutil-a] [ikusi du]=A0[man-ERG] [boy-ABS] [saw]

, which naturally corresponds to
=A0[lo nanmu] [lo nanla] [pu viska]

Unlike Esperanto, L= ojban does not morphologically (and syntactically, for that matter) mark ca= ses, so the interpretation is usefully up to the listener/reader.

> and for transitive predicates the x1-case is the one that
> = usually corresponds to the agent, just like the subject case in
> nom= inative-accusative.

Whether or not a transitive predicate's x1 i= s the agent does not at least in the above examples affect Basque speakers&= #39; interpretation of the x2-case; gizonak is the agent, but it'= ;s of ergative case, and mutila of absolutive case. And there is not= hing which would prohibit them from interpreting lo nanmu lo nanla pu vi= ska in the same native scheme of theirs. Even if lo nanmu is exp= licitly marked as the agent with gau, they would associate it with t= heir native eargative marker -ak, while native Japanese speakers wou= ld associate it with their nominative marker -ga.

=A0
Active-stative would require that some intransitive verbs have an
x1-case only while others have an x2-case only, which is never the
case (unless you are thinking of things like "zi'o broda", bu= t I doubt
it's fair to use such unusual cases for the classification).

For one thing, Lojban has certain characteristics of fluid-S= , a subtype of active-stative. Wikipedia defines fluid-S (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_= stative) as:

[...] the marking of the intransit= ive argument is decided by the speaker based on semantic considerations. That is, for any given intransitive ver= b the speaker may choose whether to mark=20 the subject as agentive or patientive, with agentive marking implying a=20 degree of volition or control, and patientive=20 implying lack of volition or control, suffering, or sympathy on the part of the speaker.

Consider single-argument intransitive pre= dicates like sipna. In da sipna, da, unmarked, is eith= er agentive or patientive: when da ri'a sipna, it's patienti= ve; when da segau sipna, it's agentive.

It's the same for multiple-argument intransitive predicates like sakli. In da sakli de, da, unmarked, is again either age= ntive or patientive: when da ri'a sakli de, it's patientive;= when da segau sakli de, it's agentive.

Also, tu'a and jai can make the intransitive argument= either the agent or the object of a transitive verb -- the arbitrary marki= ng of which is what is commonly defined as the main feature of active-stati= ve.

=A0
> There are more to the similarity between Lojban and Japanese, but I= 9;m having
> difficulty putting it into English. For one thing, briefly, the distin= ction
> between the subject, object, and complement in Japanese is not as impo= rtant
> as in English, which has led some notable Japanese linguists to sugges= t that
> every verb argument in this language is basically a complement of equa= l
> significance in its relation to the predicate, which sounds like what = terbri
> are to its selbri in Lojban.

I would agree that the distinction is less important than in English,=
but there is still a distinction. The x1-case especially has very
distinct properties compared with the other cases, and the x2-case to
a lesser extent also has some special properties with respect to the
rest.

They may have distinct properties, but the p= oint is that one argument is not more significant than the others. viska= 's x1 is not more important than its x2, while in English see's x1 (the subject) is more important than its x2 as evidenced by such= facts as that I see that. can be reduced to I see. but not f= ormally to See that. In Lojban and Japanese, mi viska | watasi-wa= miru, viska ra | sore-o miru and viska | miru are equall= y valid. (Such ellipsis is also possible in some European languages like Sp= anish and Polish, but they differ from the pair in question in that their a= rguments inflect.) English prioritises the subject and formally requires it= s presence in an indicative sentence, as in It rains., which cannot = formally be Rains.

Also: as I attempted to explain above, the x1-case as well as the x2-ca= se in Lojban are by default indefinite, user-dependent. So I don't thin= k one can objectively prescribe the properties of the x1/x2 as a definite r= epresentation of one grammatical case.


I'm not an expert, so I might have said some stupid things, in = which case I would be happy=20 to be corrected and educated.

mu'o mi'e tijlan

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