Re: rights (2)

[Robin Turner <robin@bilkent.edu.tr>]

la xod. cusku di'e

> ka'u might be thrown in too, in the context of human culture. In the US
> Declaration of Independence se'o might have been more appropriate, since
> that was based on rights issued by God.

{se'o} seems like a good rendering of "self-evident" - it has a kind of
Kantian ring to it.  However, I'm not sure how some of the American
revolutionaries would have reacted to the idea that these rights were issued
by God.  If I remember rightly (there ought to be an attitudinal for that!),
the phrase "Nature's God" was thrown in as a kind of Deist compromise
between the atheists and the Christians.  In fact, if you wanted to express
the idea that rights came from God, {ju'o} would be more appropriate, the
root being {djuno} with religion filling the epistomology place {ta'o
.e'ocaizo'o la'edi'u na'e mukti lenu lenu malmi'o zo djuno darlu kei ba
rapli}

co'o mi'e robin.




           

From sdlee@cs.hku.hk (Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}) Sun Feb  7 19:13:59 1999
X-Digest-Num: 55
Message-ID: <44114.55.216.959273824@eGroups.com>
Date: 08 Feb 1999 11:13:59 +0800
From: sdlee@cs.hku.hk (Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~})
Subject: Re: Lojban Accent
X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 216

>>>>> "Robin" == Robin Turner <robin@Bilkent.EDU.TR> writes:

    Robin> Change in volume is probably universal; change in stress
    Robin> and intonation is probably not.  Speakers of tonal
    Robin> languages often have problems speaking English because they
    Robin> sound "flat" or "singsong" and thus, to English ears,
    Robin> unemotional.  

This is because most speakers  of tonal language do not understand the
concept of "word stress" well.   The Westerners and teachers tell them
it is  "stress", without  explaining clearly what  physical properties
distinguishes a stressed and an unstressed syllable.  So, they have to
rely on  their own observeration to  tell what stress  is.  Because of
the  tonal  nature of  their  mother tongues,  they  tend  to be  more
sensitive to the differences in  pitch levels, and they tend to ignore
the durations, loudness and the possible variations of pitch-levels of
the  stressed syllables.   That's  why their  accents  sound flat  and
singsong.   That pitch-level cannot  be varied  freely is  so incarned
into their brains that they  simply ignore such variations made by the
Westerners.  As a result, the memorize word stress positions using the
same  methods as  they memorize  word tones  in their  native tongues.
Very often, they simply interpret  "word stress" as the differences in
pitch (but not loudness nor duration), i.e. a synonym of "tone".




    Robin> If Lojban were widely used as an auxiliary languages, such
    Robin> intercultural misunderstandings would probably still occur,
    Robin> but would be ameliorated by the use of attitudinal
    Robin> indicators.

Yeah.    Intonational  indicators  in   English  (and   most  European
languages) are not well  documented.  Even textbooks would not mention
too much about  how to intonations correctly.  Too  often, the learner
has to rely  on his own listening skills.   However, most learners are
not trained by  linguists.  They are trained by  their mother tongues.
So, it is not suprising that  they tend to ignore differences that are
not  made in  their mother  tongues,  and they  tend to  overemphasize
subtle differences that are vital in their mother tongues.




-- 
Lee Sau Dan                     §õ¦u´°(Big5)                    ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ) 
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