[lojban] Re: {X1 selbri X2} = {X2 se selbri X1}?

[Matt Arnold <mattarn@123.net>]

Opi Lauma,
you are expecting everything to be verbs, but lojban works on relationships. A verb is an action, but a relationship between two things could be a property, not an action. The relationship between Tom and Mary is "talking" and that relationship is described as "beautiful."
- epkat


adam@pubcrawler.org wrote:
>On Mon, 11 Apr 2005, Opi Lauma wrote:
>
>> As I understood from previous postings, {X1 talks to
>> X2} and {X2 is talked by X1} mean the same. {X1 tavla
>> X2} and {X2 se tavla X1} have also the same meaning.
>
>Yes.
>
>> My question is whether {X1 melbi tavla X2} and {X2
>> melbi se tavla X1} have also the same meaning.
>
>Ahhh, interesting question.  Since tanru have a huge range
>of meanings, I'd say it's likely that they can mean any of
>the same set of things.  But I'd also guess that they
>probably wouldn't get the same default meanings.
>
>> It seams to me that according to Reference Grammar
>> (http://www.lojban.org/publications/reference_grammar/chapter2.html)
>> the last two sentences have different meaning. Really, the
>> first one is translated as {Tom beautifully-talks to
>> Mary.} and the second one is translated as {Mary is a
>> beautiful-audience for Tom.}. In the last sentence
>> "beautiful" is related with action of Mary, it means that
>> Mary is talked by Tom and she does it beautifully.
>> However, as I understood from previous postings, "to be
>> talked" means "to do nothing" (even stone can be talked),
>> so I cannot understand how one can do nothing beautifully?
>
>No, I don't think the beauty is necessarily an action of
>either one.  That is, either {la .tam. melbi tavla la
>.meris.} or {la .meris. melbi se tavla la .tam} could
>really be meaning {la .tam. tavla la .meris. lo ka melbi},
>for instance (Tom talks to Mary about beauty), as well as
>many other things.  So they probably can mean the same
>things, though you might be quicker to guess one or the
>other with a different construct.
>
>Also, you can get the latter arrangement of sumti with the
>former tanru, by using {X2 se ke melbi tavla [ke'e] X1}.
>The {ke...ke'e} brackets are used for grouping inside a
>tanru, so then the {se} modifies the entire tanru place
>structure.
>
>In general, I think {melbi tavla} isn't a great tanru to
>ponder too deeply.  The essence of tanru is that they can
>mean any number of things, as is convenient, so it's nice
>to chose ones that convey your meaning succinctly.  I think
>the purpose of putting {melbi tavla} in the examples was
>sort of like a koan, to get people to think about "what are
>the ranges of meanings this could have?", but with most
>tanru it's fairly obvious what was meant.  And if not, you
>can always ask for clarification ({di'u tanru fo mo} or
>{ki'a} would work fine).
>--
>Adam Lopresto
>http://cec.wustl.edu/~adam/
>
>Eschew obfuscation!
>
>
>
>
> 
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