RE: [lojban] Re: Loglish: A Modest Proposal

["Ben Goertzel" <ben@goertzel.org>]

Hi,

> On 8/16/05, Ben Goertzel <ben@goertzel.org> wrote:
> > For instance, I was thinking about something like a "queh"
> > reference-indicator, to be used as in
> >
> > "Lo man go lo playground.  It queh man kill lo dog.  It eat lo cat."
> >
> > ("The man goes to the playground.  He kills the dog.  He eats the cat.")
>
> I think you need {cu} in front of "go" and "kill", otherwise
> you get tanru: "lo man go" would be "the man goer" and
> "man kill" would be "man killer".

Correct, sorry...

> Also "go" could be confused with the cmavo {go}.

That is a more frustrating problem...

In writing one could solve it by some awkward mechanism like

"Lo man cu _go lo playground"

I don't think it occurs often because very few cmavo are English words

In speech I can't think of a non-annoying way to solve it... except by
outlawing/replacing
those few English words that overlap with cmavo, e.g. replacing "go" with
"proceed"

"Lo man cu proceed lo playground"

or with "eng_go" (enggo?),

"Lo man cu enggo lo playground"

;-p

> > The idea here is that "it" is used as a generic referential
> indicator, but
> > "queh" is used to precede a qualitative indicator of what the
> "it" refers
> > back to.  Then, subsequent uses of "it" are assumed to keep
> referring back
> > to the same referent, until another use of "it" coupled with "queh"
> > ooccurs...
>
> That's just how Lojban {goi} works.

Hmmm... I'm not sure it's exactly the same.

I think my example was not sufficiently evocative, though.

For instance, in my intended usage, you could say

"la Dr. Benjamin Goertzel cu enggo lo playground.  It queh man cu kill lo
dog.  It cu eat lo cat.

In this case, "It" is defined to refer to "Dr. Benjamin Goertzel", not to
"man" generically.

The "man" qualifier following the "queh" is intended to merely *guide the
listener's mind* toward the right antecedent for the pronoun.  It's not
intended to *explicitly define* the pronoun.  So, basically

"It queh man"

is the rough equivalent of the English "he", and

"It queh woman"

is the rough equivalent of the English "she"

Is there an equivalent of "queh" in this sense in Lojban?

> Lojban also has {fi'o}, which is just like your "quu", except
> for word order: "lo pliers quu weapon" = {fi'o -weapon lo -pliers}
> (or rather {fi'o xarci lo cinza}.)

Yes, I guess that is right...

http://www.lojban.org/en/publications/reference_grammar/chapter9.html

(I think I didn't encounter that one in Lojban for Beginners, or maybe it
was there and I didn't remember it...)

> And while {zei} is not exactly the same as "qui", since you
> don't have lujvo in Loglish you could use it for that.

That is a good suggestion.

-- Ben