[lojban] Re: E-Prime & Lojban

["Adam D. Lopresto" <adam@pubcrawler.org>]

I've looked at it a few times, but I can never entirely figure out what
they intend.

Nonetheless, it appears to me that the structure of Lojban would not help
further the goals of E-Prime at all.  Quoting from the article:

------
In the English language, the verb 'to be' has several distinct functions:

* identity, of the form "noun copula noun" [The cat is an animal]
* predication, of the form "noun copula adjective" [The cat is furry]
* auxiliary, of the form "noun copula verb" [The cat is sleeping];
[The cat is bitten by the dog]
* existence, of the form "copula noun" [There is a cat]
* location, of the form "noun copula place" [The cat is on
the mat]

Bourland sees specifically the "identity" and "predication" functions as
pernicious, but advocates eliminating all forms for the sake of simplicity. 
------

Lojban uses predication extensively, almost exclusively.  It seems like
E-Prime wants to put a distancing verb in place of a form of "to be", so that
"The cat is red" becomes something like "The cat appears red [to me, under
this light."  The natural Lojban form ({le mlatu cu xurne}), while omitting an
explicit copula, seems equivalent to the deprecated English version.

On Fri, 11 Sep 2009, tijlan wrote:

> What do you think of E-Prime?
>
> Does the practice of Lojban discourage uses of "to be" in English? We
> seem to frequent the form of "lo skina cu pluka" more than the form of
> "lo skina cu me lo pluka", in which "me" may roughly correspond to the
> English copula "be", as in "the movie is good". Could this mean that
> Lojban has some bearings on the discipline of E-Prime?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime
>
> mu'o jundi mi'e tijlan
>
>
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--
Adam Lopresto
http://cec.wustl.edu/~adam/

Windows95 (noun): 32 bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16
    bit patch to an 8 bit operating system originally coded for a 4
    bit microprocessor, written by a 2 bit company, that can't stand 1
    bit of competition.


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