[lojban] Re: tanru

[John E Clifford <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

--- opi_lauma <opi_lauma@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> > 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.

Well, that assumes that "beautifully-talks" has a
clear meaning in English, which is just not the
case, though it may exclude some possibilities.

> It means that "la tam. melbi
> tavla la meris" should
> be translated in this case as "Tom is a
> beautiful-talker to Mary."

Also not clear in English.

> 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)

This is at least clear: {la meris} is an argument
to {tavla}, not (necessarily) to {melbi}.  In a
tanru only the last brivlq functions with
unmarked arguments.  To attach {la meris} to
{melbi} only would take {be la meris} right after
the {melbi}; to attaach it to both would require
that they be internally joined in some way,
{melbi je tavla}, say.

> 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? 

The Lojban sentnence is vague (or ambiguous) in
ways that are not natural for the various vague
English translations.  The problem is Lojban
internal and is discussed in CLL, though it can
never be dsicussed as fully as we might feel the
need for: Chapter 5, especially section 16, deals
with the issue.

>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".

Yes, this is a common one, but probably not
significantly more common than {sumti1 brivla2
brivla1 sumti2} =  {sumti1 brivla1 sumti2 lo
brivla2}, for example.  Your case has the
advantage of being most like the most common (?)
corresponding forms in English and other familiar
languages, where the pattern is Adverb+Verb.