Re: [lojban] Digest Number 1759

[Nick Nicholas <opoudjis@optushome.com.au>]

On Sunday, Jun 1, 2003, at 19:40 Australia/Melbourne,  
lojban@yahoogroups.com wrote:

> Message: 1
>    Date: Sat, 31 May 2003 11:57:40 +0100
>    From: "And Rosta" <a.rosta@lycos.co.uk>
> Subject: RE: Re: "x1 is a Y for doing x2" (was: RE: Re: antiblotation  
> (was: RE: taksi
>
> Stefan:

>> As somebody said: brivla are not tense specific. This also means that
>> brivla are not specific concerning CA'A. So even if a taxi never had a
>> passenger it is "innately capable" (= {ka'e}) of having one and is
>> therefore a taxi. So what you want is already there

> As for the ka'e taxi, the semantics of CAhA are currently unclear;
> it is something the BF will need to rule on. It is by no means
> established that the "innately capable" gloss is consistent with
> the rest of what is said about CAhA. (The alternative interpretation
> of "ka'e" is, roughly, "could be/could have been".) Still, whichever
> meaning {ka'e} has, I don't think "that which is innately capable
> of being a taxi carrying a passenger for a fare" or "that which
> could be/could have been a taxi carrying a passenger for a fare"
> is an adequate rendition of English "taxi". It is far too broad.
> There is no escaping the purposive element of "for" in the sense
> of words like "taxi" and "knife". That is, these are categories
> partly defined by their purposes.

Kibbitzing where I have no business being: any car is innately capable  
of becoming a taxi, so that isn't what you want after all. I don't  
think the point is purpose, either, so much as conventional  
association: a car which announces its availability for hire in a  
culturally agreed on way.

> Message: 5
>    Date: Sat, 31 May 2003 13:20:23 -0500
>    From: Jordan DeLong <lojban-out@lojban.org>
> Subject: Re: ISO 639-2 request
>
> If you're going by that Nick-and-Goran conversation from 1995, I
> don't think that was anywhere *close* to fluency.
>
> Hell, Robin and I had a far more-fluent conversation than that on
> the phone a little while ago, and it was still quite choppy (lots
> of "xu do jimpe").

The sample i posted was random, and we were both tipsy; but I don't  
think we were ever oodles more fluent. (I don't think it was *that*  
disfluent, but I'm not that fussed.)

> Nick may have improved since then, of course, but I seriously doubt
> he's fluent by normal standards (no offense to nick intended).

None taken, at least in this instance. :-) As both Jorge and Robin have  
said, clearly none of us are. And rest assured: I've not improved. I do  
not practice Lojban in any way shape or form: the Lojban I have is what  
I remember sine 1992, with slow decay, and only occasional boosters...

> Either way, though, 30 is just plain bogus.  However, I'd think 30
> is probably a pretty accurate count of the numer of people who are
> interested in the language (for a definition of "interest" that
> doesn't include people who've just heard of the language and lurk
> on the mailing list).

Agreed. Anything beyond 50 at most is outrageous puffing.

> Message: 6
>    Date: Sat, 31 May 2003 14:12:50 -0400
>    From: "Craig" <ragnarok@pobox.com>
> Subject: Re: ISO 639-2 request
>
> I have yet to see a tape or transcript of that, despite repeated  
> promises
> from Nick.

The file I'd posted is at:  
http://ptolemy.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/dist/19950828.1.mp3

I'm listening to one of the three tapes. Yeah, pretty disfluent; I have  
flashes of machinegun, interrupted with lots of uhs. For what I've  
played back, Goran is a little less confident, though he basically  
understands me, I think. The tape quality is pretty crap on the first  
half of side one; there are 3 tapes in total, 60mins, but the actual  
Lojban on them is scattered here and there.

> Message: 7
>    Date: Sat, 31 May 2003 13:33:11 -0500
>    From: Jordan DeLong <lojban-out@lojban.org>
> Subject: Re: ISO 639-2 request
>
> There was a brief mp3 a while back.  I don't know if it was the
> whole conversation.  But there was english and people asking what
> gismu mean, and it didn't seem like Goran understood very much of
> what Nick said.

*shrug* That was tape 3; there's some tentativeness on the tape 1 I've  
just been listening to as well. Note that there are others in all  
discussions; I see on tape 1 I was translating as I went for assembled  
conlangers (including Richard Kennaway and Lars Mathiessen)...

Ain't no way I'll transcribe it this lifetime; when I get around to  
getting myself an mp3 encoder, I'll just dump the audio onto my website.

> Message: 9
>    Date: Sat, 31 May 2003 14:47:38 -0400 (EDT)
>    From: Invent Yourself <xod@thestonecutters.net>
> Subject: Re: ISO 639-2 request

> I go by this: post a Lojban message to the main or members lists and  
> see
> how many people bother reading it. Compare the results to an Esperanto
> list. As for students, fine: repeat it in 6 months' time.

.i .ua semu'ibo zo'e pe la xelvetias. puza benji lo cipra notci .i .e'u  
ro junri cu spuda

> But anything to inflate the numbers, right? I mean, those mabla
> Klingon upstarts are embarrassing us in the PR arena!!!!!

Have wiped the floor with, as you know well. Noone knows the numbers  
there either, but the mailing list is probably double the number of  
actives; and the strange thing about Klingon is, at least snippets of  
the language are spoken outside the aegis of the LLG equivalent.

.i mi ba'e se spaji lo fasnu pe bazi le pamoi nu bangrtlingana salci  
poi mi zvati .i diklo la lyzvegas. .i ba'o le nunpenmi mi'a noi  
bangrtlingana certu ku'o joi la mark.okrand. noi finti le bangu cu  
klama le xotli pe la xilton. startrek. mu'i lenu se zdile .i vi le  
xotli barja so'u nelci be la startrek. cu se dasni le draci steci gi'e  
xalka pinxe .i su'u prenu noi dasni lo prenrtlingana steci cu krixa  
kancysku li pa ce'o li re ce'o li ci bau le bangrtlingana pu'ozi lenu  
pinxe .i mi tirna su'ole bangu poi se bacru lo fange be mi .e ritli ke  
bangu cecmu be'o zi'enoi fange dasni zo'o .i le pinxe cu ji'a se spaji  
lenu bazi penmi le finti be le bangu be'o .e ra'u le finti be le xalka  
selsanga poi vo'a pu sanga

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 
+++
Nick Nicholas. The Nonce and Future    Henry Squirrel was thirsty. He
Linguist. University of Melbourne.     walked over to the river bank
nickn@unimelb.edu.au                   where his good friend Bill Bird
http://www.lexicon.net.au/~opoudjis    was sitting. Henry slipped and
                                        fell in the river. Gravity  
drowned.
         ---  TALE-SPIN Story Generator, James Meehan, Yale AI Lab, 1975.



------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Get A Free Psychic Reading! Your Online Answer To Life's Important Questions.
http://us.click.yahoo.com/Lj3uPC/Me7FAA/ySSFAA/GSaulB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscribe@onelist.com 

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/