[lojban] Re: Help in examples ...

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

> > There's no such thing ... If we 
> > called the sumti "noun phrases", the gismu "simple
> 
> > verbs" and so on, we could speak about lojban
> grammar 
> > in English just fine. 
  
> 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".  The selbri, and brivla in particular,
> have almost 
> swayed her because of the unification offered by
> predicates. Counter 
> examples to sumti=noun might get most of the way
> there. 

I'm not speaking about that. We might conceivably say
that {blanu} is a verb that means "is blue" or "to be
blue". "is blue" is not a verb but works like a verb,
in the same sense that "my father" is not a noun but
works like a noun. All this is not precise, is
methaphor.

What I'm saying is that we may label things however we
want as long as we get the meaning across. No 
particular way of labelling has magical effects.  
If someone wants to know how lojban works (I'm
not saying to learn it), you must explain that
{le karce cu blanu} means 
"car is blue", regardless of whether you say that 
{blanu} is a "gismu", a "verb" or a "pigeon". 
Using nouns that a lojbanist would approve off 
doesn't make things easier to understand at all. 

Regards,

--jordi


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