[lojban] Re: Help in examples ...

[jordi mas <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

> I've been trying to explain to someone why it is
> when discussing 
> lojban that "standard" linguistic terms such as
> "noun", "complex noun 
> phrase" and "verb", etc., don't suffice. 
>  
> I've pointed out that the clarity and unity provided
> by a single 
> concept of "predicate with arguments" makes it
> simpler, and that 
> introducing "noun", "verb", etc. simply makes the
> situation more 
> complex, but it doesn't work with her mindset. 
>
> Please can someone provide me with a few examples
> where a sumti 
> cannot be passed of as "just a complex sort of
> noun"? 

There's no such thing. Such a description is wide and
imprecise enough to include all sumti. Anyway, finding
such an example wouldn't help at all.

You can't win because she's basically right. If we
called the sumti "noun phrases", the gismu "simple
verbs" and so on, we could speak about lojban grammar
in English just fine. That's just considered 
blasphemous here, by custom,
but there's no logical, objetive, rational reason 
not to do develop a grammatical terminology that
doesn't give the creeps to English speakers. Which
is probably her point.

mu'omi'e jordis.


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