On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 6:21 AM, Michael Everson
<michael.everson@gmail.com> wrote:
<snip>
> That is, he wanted it to look like this:
> Mi klama la Bast,n. I la Bab cusku "lu mi klama li'u"
Not quite. But I'd be very interested to talk with people about the various options one might have for punctuation markup.
Lojban doesn't have "punctuation". For example, Lojban's equivalent to "?" is {xu}, as in {xu do jimpe mi}, which means "Do you understand me?" While Lojban does have 3 special characters- {.}, {,}, and {'}, they are used as letters, not as punctuation. The correct form of the Lojban {mi klama la.bast,n. .i la.bab cusku lu mi klama li'u} is {mi klama la.bAst,n. .i la.bab cusku lu mi klama li'u}
> Caps at start of sentences, quote marks, a few other things I can't remember.
Caps for proper names (la Alis), and anomalous stress marked by acute accents rather than by capitalization (which is thereby freed for other use). Near as I can tell the only word in the text affected by this is "la meri,An" ("la Meri,Án" or "la Meri,án"; the original is "Mary Ann").
Capitalization in Lojban is used to mark non-standard stress. In Lojban, all words are stressed on the second-to-last syllable, except in names, when marked by capitalizing either the entire syllable or just the vowel of the syllable that gets primary stress. la.meri,an. is thus pronounced la.merI,an., stressed on "ri", whereas la.meri,An is stressed on "an".
> We (people on IRC at the time), umm, kinda told him where to stick that idea. In pretty clear terms.
My memory of the IRC was not so black and white. You, and some others, expressed a lack of interest in an edition with "Victorian" typography, and criticized the notion of doing so. But everyone did not share that view. Pages like http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Lojban+typography and http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Punctuation suggest that there is no blanket ban on punctuation, for instance.
The Punctuation page describes where and how it is acceptable to use punctuation. However, such punctuation in not part of Lojban. {xu? do jimpe mi} is {xu do jimpe mi} with a non-Lojbanic character inserted to indicate that {xu} is a question word. {mi cusku lu" mi cliva "li'u} is {mi cusku lu mi cliva li'u} with non-lojbanic characters inserted to indicate the begin and ending quote words. They are NOT part of Lojban writing, have never been used in any Lojban writing I've seen, and only serve one purpose, to my knowledge- which is, to help beginning learners remember what certain words do.
Since I I highly doubt that someone so new to the Lojban language that they can't even remember what {xu} or {li'u} means without a foreign character put in the text would be able to read {la.alis.}, such foreign punctuation has no place in the text.
> I don't think he likes us anymore.
I like you fine. I just disagree with your stance on punctuation and typographic conventions.
Our stance is, use Lojban punctuation and typography. It's that simple.
I also like Lewis Carroll, and good typography. I find long paragraphs with no clear visual indication of sentence boundaries to be bewildering. I am sure that computers and savants find it quite simple to parse. I as a multilingual trained linguist expert in writing systems, I still find it much easier to navigate the language when standard Latin-script conventions are used.
As far as I'm concerned, you're perfectly allowed to insert line breaks and paragraphs in the appropriate locations. For instance, "ni'o <text> ni'o <text>" would be fine as:
"
ni'o <text>
ni'o <text>
"
{ni'o} being equivalent to the paragraph in English. ({ni'oni'o} being section, {ni'oni'oni'o} being chapter, etc.)
My English and Cornish editions are used in Cornwall by learners who find it helpful to compare the two texts. Thing which helps learners to navigate a paragraph are sentence boundaries, capitalized proper names, question marks, and so on.
Indeed, in http://www.lojban.org/publications/reference_grammar/chapter3.html, we find the following.
"Technically, the period is an optional reminder to the reader of a mandatory pause that is dictated by the rules of the language; because these rules are unambiguous, a missing period can be inferred from otherwise correct text. Periods are included only as an aid to the reader."
A period is not necessary if a space is used, a space is not necessary if a period is used. As such, {mi tavla do la.alis.}, could also be written {mi tavla do la .alis.}, {mi tavla do la alis}, or the horribly atrocious looking and much frowned upon {mitAvladola.alis.}, all of which are the exact same utterance. My personal preference is, when a glottal stop would be pronounced when speaking something, to choose the period over the space, as in {mi tavla do la.alis.}. Other people prefer to not ever use the period in writing, as in {mi tavla do la alis}. The CLL, the official reference grammar, at no point omits either, and would write it as {mi tavla do la .alis.}. Any of these conventions regarding {denpabu} is fine by me, as they are all {lo lojbo}.
In for a penny, in for a pound. Full stops are not necessary; they are redundant. So too are quotation marks, and since anomalous stress can be more congenially marked with the acute accent (as in Spanish) than by SHOUTING, there's no reason an edition of a text could not choose to do that, and thereby permit capital letters to be used, redundantly, to mark the beginnings of sentences, proper names, and whatnot.
Certainly, you can write {la.meri,An.} as {la.meri,án.}. Accents are an acceptable form of non-standard stress demarcation. However, {la.Meri,án.} is just plain wrong. Lojban does not capitalise proper nouns. Lojban doesn't even have nouns. The name of Paris in Lojban is {la.parIs.}, or, if you like, {la.parís.}, it is not {la.París.}
Furthermore. The "." is a letter in Lojban. The "?" is not. It might not be strictly necessary to use "." in {lo nu lojbo ciska}, but only because a person proficient in Lojban knows that one goes in that place. {mi klama do la alis la lojban} is still pronounced as {mi klama do la .alis. la .lojban.}, regardless.
You, Robin, and maybe even many Lojbanists, might believe that such redundancy is irrelevant, un-useful, wrong-headed, ugly, stupid, or just plain "wrong". I rather doubt that all 464 members of this discussion forum will hold such extreme views, though. Redundancy is harmless -- indeed, we don't speak with punctuation marks in English or Irish or any other languages. Lojban's "audio-visual isomorphism" is extremely cool. But centuries of Latin typographic practice have evolved because those practices are *useful* to readers (as useful as the full stop) and I can see no reason not to pursue my project just because you and a few others on IRC, "umm, kinda told me where to stick" the idea.
In the issue of punctuation, Lojban is more like Japanese then English. For example, to say "You are healthy." in Japanese, is "Ogenki desu". In lojban, {ko kanro}. To ask "Are you healthy?" in Japanese, is "Ogenki desu ka". In Lojban, {xu ko kanro}. I personally feel that foreign punctuation, such as {?} and {"} would actually be detrimental. In other words, far from being the help you seem to think they would be, I see them as a hindrance. I would not be at all surprised if the majority, if not the entirety, of my fellow Lojbanists agreed with me on this.
I would appreciate it if anyone who *is* interested in this would say so, as I'd like to discuss the options regarding redundant markup of quoted material.
Best regards,
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
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