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RE:[lojban] Request for grammar clarifications

In a message dated 5/30/2001 10:00:39 AM Central Daylight Time, 
robin@BILKENT.EDU.TR writes:


> ro cevni du la .alax." = "Every god is identical with Allah".
> 
> But does this really capture the sense of "la ilahi il'allah" (which I 
> assume 
> it is a translation of)? 
> 

Well, the formula looks to be negative ("la"), and the usual trat is "There 
is no God but Allah" so it might literally be {no da poi na du la .allax. cu 
cevni}, which, unfortunately, allows for atheism, so it is not right either 
-- for so does the cowan's version. As I was saying about quantifiers, ...

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<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><BODY BGCOLOR="#ffffff"><FONT SIZE=2>In a message dated 5/30/2001 10:00:39 AM Central Daylight Time, 
<BR>robin@BILKENT.EDU.TR writes:
<BR>
<BR>
<BR><BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">ro cevni du la .alax." = "Every god is identical with Allah".
<BR>
<BR>But does this really capture the sense of "la ilahi il'allah" (which I 
<BR>assume 
<BR>it is a translation of)? &nbsp;
<BR></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BR>
<BR>Well, the formula looks to be negative ("la"), and the usual trat is "There 
<BR>is no God but Allah" so it might literally be {no da poi na du la .allax. cu 
<BR>cevni}, which, unfortunately, allows for atheism, so it is not right either 
<BR>-- for so does the cowan's version. As I was saying about quantifiers, ...</FONT></HTML>

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On Tuesday 29 May 2001 17:07, John Cowan wrote:
> Nick Nicholas wrote:
> > Is {lo ninmu du la djiotis.} an erroneous statement? Not stylistically
> > undesirable, but demonstrably illogical or false?
>
> No, certainly not, given that "la djiotis. ninmu" holds. It means
> that there is some woman who is identical with (= the same object
> as) Djiotis.

Incidentally, is there any difference between {lo ninmu du la djiotis.} and 
{lo ninmu du la'e lu djiotis. li'u} ?
>
> > Is the fact that du is
> > intended to render as equal *names* of a thing, rather than just
> > descriptions, sufficient to do so?
>
> Not at all. Indeed, using "du" between names is a rather marginal
> use, as in "Cicero is Tully". The more reasonable uses are things
> like "Fred is the man who mows the lawn" and "The man I saw at the
> beach is the spy who was arrested last week" (Take that, Ortcutt!),
> where we relate a name to an in-mind description. Using a veridical
> description instead is certainly both grammatical and reasonable,
> as in "ro cevni du la .alax." = "Every god is identical with Allah".

But does this really capture the sense of "la ilahi il'allah" (which I assume 
it is a translation of)? 

robin.tr

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