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Re: [lojban-beginners] precise tenru



On 25 September 2014 21:55, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 9:33 PM, Jacob Errington <nictytan@gmail.com> wrote:

In general about precise tanru though, I have a system of interpretation schemes. Tanru fit broadly into three categories:

1) Compositional tanru (interpreted with the Flipping Principle)
2) "and" tanru, interpreted as if a {je} were present
3) Metaphorical tanru

An example of the kind is "certu mutce", which I would interpret as short for "mutce lo ni certu". These are the tanru that give rise to fully regular lujvo, e.g. "cretce = x1 is very skilled at doing x2 ..."

Right, but... What is the place structure of "certu mutce"? 

A: mi certu mutce
B; do certu mutce ma
A: ???mi certu mutce lo ni certu ...
 
It doesn't make much sense to me. That's why tanru of this kind make me uncomfortable. They either don't mean what we take them to mean, or else the idea that tanru (at least those of this kind) inherit their place structure directly from their tertau needs to be revisited.


The place structure becomes sort of strange, you're right. If an explicit x2 is supplied, then I'd be forced to use a different interpretation scheme.
 
This is also why I don't agree with the notion that it is tanru that "give rise to fully regular lujvo". Lujvo don't come from tanru, unless the place structure of tanru is not that of their tertau.

All that I mean is that if we change the tanru elements into rafsi, in that order, we usually get jvajvo.
pipno pilno certu mutce -> pi'orplicretce -> x1 mutce lo ni ce'u certu lo ka ce'u pilno lo pipno -> "x1 is an expert pianist ..."
I write ellipsis because if someone were to actually define this lujvo, then they would need to (somewhat arbitrarily) decide on which other places are included.

 
 
"and"-tanru are essentially adjectives as in English: "barda zdani" or "pelxu bolci". Of course, you could try to interpret these with another scheme instead, but since they're tanru, context and common sense are always of the essence.

I think this is true as a first approximation, but it doesn't really explain everything because "barda zdani" is not the same as "zdani barda", "pelxu bolci" is not the same as "bolci pelxu", and so on, so there's more to it than a simple conjunction, which should be commutative.
 

Strictly speaking, it's not {je}. There's more to it, as you rightfully point out. "and"-tanru of this kind are usually asymmetrical.
 
The final category is hard to come up with examples for, but it's essentially a trashcan category, when the other schemes fail in context. 

I suppose things like "tsani blanu"? These can probably be included in the first category as well, except that the relationship with the seltau is less obvious and doesn't come from just filling a place of the tertau.


Right. Metaphorical tanru can be generalized to tanru of the first type, but with a less straightforward composition, possibly including many omitted other selbri. 
 
.i mi'e la tsani mu'o

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