[lojban-beginners] Re: Confusion with Lojban For Beginners

["Matt Arnold" <matt.mattarn@gmail.com>]

{pritu} tells you where Julia is. Julia is "to the right," but that is a relative term. The direction Julia is facing has got nothing to do with finding where she is, so that is not what it means. Only two things tell you where Julia is:

#1 Who or what is Julia to the right of? Maria. 

#2 Which way is Maria facing? The location of "to the right of Maria" changes as Maria turns around. x3 is the landmark you use to orient the scene in your imagination; that's what it means by a frame of reference.

A very loose interpretation of {la .iulias. pritu la mari,as. la klaudias.} is "Imagine Maria facing Claudia, and then look at the right side of Maria, and that is where Julia is."

-epkat

On 3/7/06, Alex Joseph Martini <alexjm@umich.edu> wrote:

On Tue, 7 Mar 2006, Jim Dabell wrote:
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>
> Near the middle, it states that pritu means:
>
> x1 is to the right of x2, where x2 is facing x3
>
> However, in the examples at the bottom, it translates:
>
> la .iulias. pritu la mari,as. la klaudias.
>
> ...as:
>
> Julia is to the right of Maria, facing Claudia.
>
> Which reads very much like it is Julia facing Claudia, not Maria.  If
> I understand the above definition of pritu correctly, the original
> Lojban says that it is not Julia facing Claudia, but Maria.

The root of this problem is that English doesn't mark who is facing
Claudia. I have understood the lojban to mean that, when a particular
observer is facing Claudia, Julia is to the right of Maria. Sort of as
follows:

Maria       Julia

Claudia

(observer)

I'm not sure that I'm specifically correct, but I hope that I'm at least
clearer. Either way about it, I've used this definition in my past
lojban and if it proves incorrect they will need an update.

mu'omi'e .alex.

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