[lojban] Re: Help in examples ...

[Jim Carter <jimc@MATH.UCLA.EDU>]

On Fri, 22 Oct 2004, riderofgiraffes wrote:
> >> Please can someone provide me with a few examples 
> >> where a sumti cannot be passed of as "just a complex 
> >> sort of noun"?  
>  
> I think that turns out not to be entirely the case. {blanu}, for 
> example, is not well described as a "verb" because it subsumes the 
> verb "to be".  

Actually, color words are a pretty standard example.  "The sky blues" (a
verb), i.e.  it does the things that blue objects generally do involving
modifying light. Thus the sky is properly in the referent set of the first
argument of blanu, considered as a predicate.  (Or to be over-pedantic 
about it, among the N-tuples which comprise the referent set of blanu, 
there are one or more (opportunity for pedantry squared here) in which the 
sky occupies the first slot.)

In English (and all(?) Indo-European languages) we say "the sky 'is' blue",
because of a pervasive convention that static properties are never verbs, 
and hence they need a special construction, for which "is" was co-opted.  
This is an area where Lojban deliberately tries to be different, to good 
effect in my opinion.

That line of reasoning would probably drive your girlfriend up the wall.

James F. Carter          Voice 310 825 2897    FAX 310 206 6673
UCLA-Mathnet;  6115 MSA; 405 Hilgard Ave.; Los Angeles, CA, USA  90095-1555
Email: jimc@math.ucla.edu    http://www.math.ucla.edu/~jimc (q.v. for PGP key)


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