[lojban-beginners] Re: Stress.

[Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org>]

On Mon, Sep 04, 2006 at 09:36:46AM -0400, Matt Arnold wrote:
> On 9/3/06, Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org> wrote:
> >On Sun, Sep 03, 2006 at 11:27:06AM -0700, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> >
> >Thought about it more, ran a search.  "letadjicaku" can parse as
> >"le ta djica ku" or "le tadji ca ku", both completely valid and
> >sensible.
> 
> It has long been maintained that Lojban is a language in which
> puns would not work as a form of humor. Strictly speaking of
> correct Lojban, this is true. But this example made me realize
> that a clever punster who speaks Lojban can still create humor by
> speaking an utterance ever so slightly wrong. If the listener is
> sufficiently good with Lojban, the pattern-recognition engine the
> human brain will recognize what he said and what he almost said,
> resulting in a humorous double meaning. This is almost exactly the
> same mechanism as a pun. I expect a lot of Lojbanic
> language-dependent humor to depend on a listener recognizing what
> was _almost_ said.

That's a *very* interesting point.  A huge amount of skill would be
required.  It'll be interesting to see how that turns out.

-Robin

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