[lojban] Re: Alice style and finalisation (was:The Alice Translation Has Moved And Changed)

[Invent Yourself <xod@thestonecutters.net>]

On Wed, 9 Oct 2002, Pierre Abbat wrote:

> On Wednesday 09 October 2002 11:44, Jorge Llambias wrote:
> > You're mostly seeing my final version. In particular, I removed
> > the dots from Pierre and Robin's parts to harmonize the whole
> > thing. I tried to follow the word order of the original as
> > much as possible in keeping with the sense.
>
> The dots should go back in throughout. The Thais and Ancient Greeks may
> disagree, but I find a text without punctuation very hard to read.
>
> As to word order, if you have two FA tags in one bridi to preserve word
> order, it's too much. One SE and one FA is okay, e.g. le selci'a cu se fanva
> fi le xelso (which means the same as {fanva le selci'a le xelso}, but the
> latter might look up, see someone, and assume you uttered an observative
> about the passing translator).



SE induces the reader to keep track of two new places; FA only one. Each
FA is only half a SE, two FAs are worth one SE, so two FAs are not "too
much". Also, SE greatly multiplies the number of possible meanings of the
leading sumti, and causes backwards reinterpretations (gardenpathing),
whereas FA comes before the tagged sumti and announces the conversion
*before* the sumti is read.

On one level of learning, the reader has to pause, ponder or look up every
brivla place. On another level, all the places are fluently memorized and
a SE with two FAs thrown in presents no difficulty. But between those two
levels, FA is a little less confusing than SE.


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