On Sunday, 14 October 2012 23:23:51 UTC+1, tsani wrote:On 14 October 2012 14:47, mashers <ma...@mashley.net> wrote:
So you could do { la jbovlaste ciksi zo tamgau fo zoi by. g1 defines t2 into form t1 .by. }
Yes. (you missed a terminator before {ciksi} however)
{ cu } ?
{cu} would be the most common way of terminating the clause in this context, but you could alternatively use {ku}, which terminates LE and LA clauses (except LA-cmevla clauses such as {la .klark.})
I'd probably use la'e before the zoi, too, but I'm not sure if a quote in itself constitutes an explanation.
I don't understand the definition of la'e according to the jbovlaste. Would you mind explaining it for me please?
la'e is the Lojban equivalent of dereferencing a pointer in programming. A text refers to something, and is therefore a symbol. Using the la'e qualifier marks that you aren't talking about the *text*, but rather to what that text *refers to*. It's the distinction between {.i mi tcidu zoi gy The Moon is a Harsh Mistress gy} and {.i mi tcidu la'e zoi gy The Moon is a Harsh Mistress gy}. The former states that you read "The Moon is a Harsh mistress", whereas the latter states that you're reading the thing to which "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" refers, and in this context, that's a book (which iirc contains a reference to Loglan.)
{by} is indeed the letter 'b'. zoi-quotes function by taking a user-decided delimiter after the word {zoi} itself. After the delimiter, you put any text you like, so long as it doesn't contain the delimiter, and then end the quote with the delimiter at the end. Formally, the structure is
zoi [delim] any-text [delim].
Ahh ok, thanks for clarifying.
The delimiter can be any one single lojban word. That includes full gismu, lujvo, zi'evla, cmevla, and cmavo.
So you could just as accurately say { zoi klama Hello World klama }, and {klama} would be interpreted as the delimiter? Not that I'm saying I would actually do that, I'm just working out the boundary of the flexibility in choosing a delimiter.
Exactly right :)
By extension, even {zoi jbojevysofkemsuzgugje'ake'eborkemfaipaltrusi'oke'ekemgubyseltru Hi guys! jbojevysofkemsuzgugje'ake'eborkemfaipaltrusi'oke'ekemgubseltru} is legal.
The choice of delimiter usually reflects the contents of the quote however. Choosing {gy} for quoting English text comes from the lojban gismu {glico} meaning "English". Quoting other languages is usually done with the first letter of that language's name in Lojban. Beware however of languages beginning with vowels, as in Lojban the proper way to refer to a vowel letter is with the magic compounds {a bu} {e bu} {i bu} and {u bu} most usually written without the space. This leads to the incorrect conclusion that these word pairs form a single word.
.u'i Yes, indirect questions in Lojban sure are fun :p
I often don't even understand them in my native language ;)
For example {mi djuno lo du'u makau klama lo zarci} -> "I know who goes to the store." The word {ma} here isn't actually a question, but an indirect question, which must be marked with {kau}.
Here, the translation is "decide what is the meaning of".
.i mi'e la tsani mu'o
Thanks. I need to take some time to understand that.