On Mar 1, 2007, at 1:27 PM, Pierre Abbat wrote:
On Thursday 01 March 2007 11:37, Karl Naylor wrote:Intuitively, I would like to see this emphasised right at thebeginning of Lojban beginners' courses -- "don't try to look for nounsand verbs in this language, nor for any other concepts from other human languages you know. Looking for predicate calculus concepts is probably OK".There are nouns and verbs in Lojban, and also conjunctions, prepositions, articles, and pronouns. There are other parts of speech that don't exist inEnglish, such as the predicate marker (which exists in Tok Pisin),terminators, and spoken quotation marks. There are no adjectives or adverbsin Lojban, and nouns and verbs are used very differently.
I would argue that there are adjectives and adverbs in Lojban, at least in the traditional linguistic sense. When I say {le xekri mlatu} for "the black cat", {mlatu} is a noun and {xekri} is modifying it - making it an adjective. And if i say {mi sutra klama} for "I quickly go", {klama} is a verb and {sutra} is modifying it - making it an adverb.
I think the important thing is that all the gismu can function as every part of speech. My preference for teaching would be to introduce things in the framework of nouns and verbs with adjectives and adverbs modifying them, and then point out how every word can be used in each part of speech. Then, once the student has a bit of vocabulary to play with, introduce the proper Lojban names for things and explain how a brivla is more than just a verb, and a sumti is more than just a noun.
Any natural language is too close to English :) German and English are closer in borrowings, but German has quite a few "weird" structural rules from an English point of view. And all those cases and things that Lojban doesn't have. Once you get to a certain point, all natural languages start to look like variations on a theme. It's just a matter of a bunch of "engineering" decisions that I can go into if anyone's interested but I'll omit otherwise.German is too close to English (if you're learning German, already knowing English) to compare learning Lojban to a Pimsleur German tape. You mightcompare it to learning Turkish or Ojibwe.
English is a nounish language, while Lojban is a verbish language. (I don't know the proper terms.) Consider "clock". If I use "clock" as a verb, it's not something a clock does; it's something done using a clock. But if I use {junla} as a verb, it is something a clock does: it ticks out time intervals with some precision, using some mechanism (or electronism). And if I use the Navajo word as a verb, it is something a clock does: it moves slowly in acircle. phma
At risk of being off topic, clock in Navajo is actually a verb turned into a noun. Something on the order of "the little one that repeatedly moves in a circle". It was one of the examples used in a book when how few real nouns Navajo has.
Back to the matter of the Pimsleur method not teaching any German grammar, I really doubt that. The courses I've listened to (Portugese and Mandarin) teach grammar implicitly -- they make you put together sentences from the beginning and you internalize the rules by learning how you can transform the set phrases you already heard. Quite unlike learning a language in a classroom where you learn that the verb follows the main noun unless x y or z forces it to the end of the sentence etc. The only way I would see you learning "no grammar" is if all you remember is vocabulary in isolation but no phrases.
Carl Lumma wrote:
Let's say I took the Pimsleur German course and modified it so it didn't "take into account the grammatical differences" between German and English, or "what sounds are used and how". Would it be a big deal? Or is the success of the course 99% due to the simple fact that it makes you listen to and repeat simple phrases in the language?
I'd say (in my non-professional opinion) that the success is mostly due to repetition of variations. Like you'd take "Where is the bathroom" and then get "Here is the bathroom" and "There is the bathroom" and then repeat with a couple other nouns. The learning of grammar comes mostly from that kind of exercise. The notes on sounds really only serve so that you can actually be understood by another speaker.
mu'o mi'e .aleks.