<<
Jordan:
> I mean that they *mean* the same things. "Semantic difference" as
> you're thinking of it, sure. But "gleki leza'i broda" and ".ui
> broda" *mean* the same thing in a real conversation (or at least
> they would most of the time).
You mean that even though the sentences have different truthconditional
meaning, speakers will generally intend to communicate the same
information when uttering them.
>>
Thanks for answering my next question before I got around to asking it; I'm sure you are right -- on the reading of Jordan, though less so on the reading of Lojban. The English muddle -- frequently acknowledged -- is an *English* (maybe even an SAE) muddle; it need not be a Lojban one. And Lojban is described to stop it being a Lojban one; let's go with that. So far as I can tell, Lojban does not allow, for example, a question to be directive other than to an answer. So the "Yes/ No" response to "May I have the sugar?," which is either witty or rude in English, is merely correct in Lojban for the direct Lojban translation {xu mi pilno le sakta}, and cannot arise for the more sensitive translation {e'o mi pilno le sakta}, which gets {ai[nai]}, not {[na]go'i}. Admittedly, {ai[nai]} is also a reading of "Yes/No" but not the one intended in the "joke." Similar differences might be maintained for attitudinals, I should hope.
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