Re: [lojban] so'o preti

["James F. Carter" <jimc@MATH.UCLA.EDU>]

On Fri, 11 May 2001, Jorge Llambias wrote:
> @c      `I quite agree with you,' said the Duchess; `and the moral of
> @c    that is--"Be what you would seem to be"--or if you'd like it put
> @c    more simply--"Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than
> @c    what it might appear to others that what you were or might have
> @c    been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared
> @c    to them to be otherwise."'
> ....
> 1- Is the English sentence grammatical? (I can't parse it no matter
> how I try, can anyone help?)

Here's my best try at the English:

[Never] imagine yourself [not] to be 
    [otherwise than]
        what [it might] appear to others that
            what
                you were or might have been
            was [not otherwise than]
                (what
                    you had been *
                would have appeared to them
                    to be otherwise)

I think "or" should occur where the asterisk is, but I checked an
alternative source (whose authoritativeness I can't vouch for), namely
http://www.sabian.org/alicech9.htm , and the text there is identical to
what we're working from, so our version is probably true to the
original.  On that basis, I can force the sentence to parse by interpreting
the last phrase as "...what you were was (what you had been would have
appeared to them...)", in other words, she says that a sentence (as a
sumti) is the same as "what you had been".  

This is semantically believable, though perverse, and in character for the
Duchess.  Here's an analog that's more likely to be actually spoken
(colloquially): "The way you were was, you were totally smashed and trying
to dance on the bar".  The Duchess' sentence takes this kind of sentence
and shifts it out of phase and slides around the limits of
comprehensibility, throwing sand in the gears of any reasonable parser.  
Which is the whole point.

James F. Carter          Voice 310 825 2897    FAX 310 206 6673
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