[lojban-beginners] Re: simple question

[Stela Selckiku <selckiku@gmail.com>]

On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 1:30 PM, Ryan Leach <rsw.leach@gmail.com> wrote:
> My confusion with connectives stems from the way the chapter in CLL on
> connectives was laid out. To be honest, I didn't understand most of
> it. The chapter made me feel as though I was reading an advanced paper
> on physics rather than information about a language. My confusion is
> at that dangerous level where I'm not sure what I don't know, much
> less what I know.


CLL is a great book, so much so that many people (including myself)
have learned Lojban from it, even though it is not a textbook.  CLL is
basically just a grammar outline.  In the connectives section for
instance what you have is a few paragraphs explaining every different
kind of connection in the language.  There's actually more text
explaining about the obscure things you'll rarely see, because they're
more complicated.

The best textbook we have is Lojban for Beginners.  I recommend
reading the chapter there on connectives too.   It focuses on some of
the more common conections: sumti, tanru and bridi-tails.  That's a
perfectly adequate set that will get you a long way as a beginner.
The only things I'd perhaps add to that are sentence connection (which
is quite simple-- maybe LfB covers it and I missed it in skimming it
just now) and modal sentence connection with "bo", like ".i ki'u bo"
(and because of that).

Let me get more specific about what you shouldn't learn, what you
should postpone learning.  First I'll start with the truth tables.
What you'll encounter most commonly is E, both being true.  Sometimes
you'll see negation used with E, but it's relatively simple to
understand (the negated one isn't true, but the other one still is).
Second most commonly you'll see A, inclusive or, meaning either the
first part or the second part or both are true.  Use of A with
negation is terribly confusing but blessedly less common these days
since we've convinced people to translate "if" more sensible ways.
You'll see O, if-and-only-if, only occassionally, basically saying,
"these two things go together".  A little more common I think actually
but still fairly rare is O+nai, which is exclusive or, one is true or
the other but not both.  (If this, then not that-- if not that, then
this.  So, one or the other.)  U, whether or not, is simple enough and
useful in my opinion, but seems actually to be fairly rare.  So, get
comfortable with E-- it's simple, it's powerful, it's what's mostly
used to connect things.  Then next learn A and O, and don't worry too
much about U.

If negation and truth tables confuses you, don't worry about it--
you're not the only one, believe me.  Complicated logical connections
are rare in conversation-- mostly they're used occasionally as
experiments-- and "huh wtf does that mean" would generally be
considered a reasonable response.  I think we should probably
emphasize this more to new people, because they read this stuff and
have no idea how rarely we actually make logical connections between
anything, conversationally.  That stuff is there when you need it or
to play around with, but conversational Lojban translates mostly not
into "if X then logically therefore either Y or not Z" but rather into
"yo wazzuuuuuuuuuuuup peeps, what's going down".  Just so you know.

The most common kinds of connection you're going to encounter are
sumti connection, and sentence connection.  Sentence connection is
usually just ".i je", putting a "je" after the sentence link, which
basically just gives a stronger sense of relatedness to two sentences
than just putting them side by side.  Other truth tables can be used
the same way of course (like ".i jo nai", either one sentence is true
or the other but not both), but they rarely are.  Sumti connection is
almost as simple-- you put ".e" between two sumti, just as you put ".i
je" between two sentences-- the only trick is that you have to
understand what a sumti is and how to form one, in order to put a
sumti on either side.  (Understanding sumti is essential to
understanding the whole language, of course, so hopefully that's not
asking too much.)  You can use prosumti on both sides: "mi .e do", or
a prosumti on one side and a name or description on the other: "mi .e
le prenu" or "le prenu .e mi", or a description on both sides: "le
gerku .e le mlatu".  In English you can say "the dog and the cat" or
you can say "the dog and cat", but it's not right to say "le gerku .e
mlatu" in Lojban, because "mlatu" on its own is just a selbri, it only
becomes a sumti when it also has an article.

Using "gi'e" to tie up bridi-tails is a bit of a trick, but one that's
worth learning because it's a popular sentence shape these days.  I
think of it as just "gi'e" in my mind, usually, because any other
truth tables than E are extremely rare in bridi-tail connection.  You
can say "gi'onai" to connect bridi-tails one-or-the-otherly, of
course, but you'll hardly ever see it.  What you're connecting with
"gi'e" is two tails, starting with the selbri.  A bridi tail is a
selbri, and also any arguments that follow it.  So an example of a
tail is "citka lo nanba", eat bread.  Another tail could be "klama lo
zarci", go to a market.  With "gi'e" we can give both of those tails
the same head, for instance "mi":  mi citka lo nanba gi'e klama lo
zarci  (I eat bread and go to a market.)  Because "mi" comes before
the selbri, it's part of the head and is shared: I do both the eating
and going.

Technically you can put more than one sumti in the head:  mi lo nanba
cu nelci gi'e citka  (I like and eat the bread.)  Because "lo nanba"
also comes before the selbri, it's both x2 places as well.  I believe
this is quite rare.  There's also a cool trick where you can put extra
sumti after a "vau" at the end at it goes onto both tails:  mi citka
gi'e nelci vau lo nanba  (Same meaning as above.)  That's also rare.
Don't worry about those tricks if they confuse you right now.  They're
just there to make "gi'e" groovy.

Forethought connection as a whole is unpopular these days.  I couldn't
teach you sentence forethought right now if I wanted to without
looking it up in the book.  Forethought connection is perfectly easy
to learn and use, and so it's probably just malglico that we depend
day-to-day on ".e" and "je" and "gi'e"-- they're just syntactically
closer to "and".  Lojban is a living language, though, and things are
as they are.  So I suggest not worrying about foresight connection at
all at first.  Later once you're more fluent we can brush up on them
together and see if we can't make them popular enough that nintadni
will need to know them. :)

Hopefully that gives you some sense of what connectives actually see
the most use these days, so you know what to focus on to get yourself
to a conversational level with us.  After you've been confused once or
twice by the theoretical descriptions, please come follow some normal
conversation (on #lojban on freenode, !lojban on identi.ca, etc) and
begin to find out which few of those tricks you'll really need to know
to catch up with the habitual patterns of today's Lojban.  It's not
half as difficult as it looks. :)

mu'o mi'e la stela se ckiku