Re: how to say

[jimc@MATH.UCLA.EDU]

John Cowan proposes to translate "I look through the window" as:
>         mi bancu be le canko ku catlu         (ku added by jimc)
>         I (beyond the window) look

Suppose this sentence were fed to a semantic analysis program; what (if
anything) could the program extract from it?  In particular, what is
the relation between the window and other sentence components?  The
current "definition" of tanru semantics is that the main word is
metaphorically modified in a figurative sort of way.  Thus beyondness
relative to the window is figuratively related to other sentence
components.

I would prefer to see some kind of diktanru semantic rule so that a
tanru like this had some chance at meaning something.  This particular
tanru would be particularly hard for the kinds of rules I've
experimented with.

I would be happier translating the sentence like this, where the main
bridi is said by a subordinate clause to penetrate the window.  In a
predicate language such as Lojban, when predicates are used to express
the relations a semantic analyser can get a grip on the meaning.

        mi catlu fi'o pagre le canko [fe'u]
        I look (which event penetrates the window)

And as was pointed out yesterday (sorry, I forgot who), this form comes
out neater with a real sumti tcita derived from pagre.  I like to think
of prepositional phrases as representing a deep structure where the
tagged sumti is related to the modified bridi in a "fi'o <selbri>" kind
of clause.

        mi catlu pa'o le canko

(I chose pagre rather than bancu because bancu would signify that the
whole event, i.e. spatially the looker, the lookee and the line between
them, was beyond the window relative to some reference point, by default
the speaker's location, ignoring the minor detail that the speaker is
explicitly identified as the looker.)

James F. Carter        Voice 310 825 2897       FAX 310 206 6673
UCLA-Mathnet;  6221 MSA; 405 Hilgard Ave.; Los Angeles, CA, USA  90024-1555
Internet: jimc@math.ucla.edu            BITNET: jimc%math.ucla.edu@INTERBIT
UUCP:...!{ucsd,ames,ncar,gatech,purdue,rutgers,decvax,uunet}!math.ucla.edu!jimc