Re: tanru

["opi_lauma" <opi_lauma@yahoo.com>]

> Yes, tanru are vague by nature.

Does it mean that "la tam. melbi tavla la meris" being without context
(I mean without any previous text) cannot be translated just as "Tom
beautifully-talks to Mary". Because in this case one loses some of the
possible meanings. It means that "la tam. melbi tavla la meris" should
be translated in this case as "Tom is a beautiful-talker to Mary.".
Really in this case it is not clear in which sense Tom is beautiful
(as speaker or not), it is also not clear how he is "related" with
Marry (whether he is beautiful for Mary or he speak to Merry). So,
having such sentence with less definite meaning we could reproduce
vagueness of the initial lojban sentence.

Is this vagueness of the considered sentence are documented in
official lojban grammar or may be it is just "projection" of the
corresponding English translation? Actually I see no necessity to
approve the considered vagueness on the grammatical level. I see no
necessity to have a possibility to construct sentences with the given
type of vagueness. From my point of view it would be better to
postulate that (for example):

"sumti1 selbri2 selbri1 sumti2" = "lo nu sumti1 selbri1 sumti2 cu selbri2"
It is
"la tam. melbi tavla la meris" = "lo nu la tam tavla la meris cu melbi".