Re: [lojban] la .alis.

[Michael Everson <michael.everson@gmail.com>]

On 28 Mar 2010, at 18:09, Jonathan Jones wrote:

> Lojban doesn't have "punctuation".

No spoken language has writing of any kind. Until it is employed.

> For example, Lojban's equivalent to "?" is {xu}, as in {xu do jimpe mi}, which means "Do you understand me?"

So? Chinese has in interrogative particle, "ma": "你好吗？ Nǐ hǎo ma?" 'Are you well?'; Irish has an interrogative particle, "an": "An dtuigeann tú?" 'do you understand?' In both languges, the question mark is arguably redundant. Yet it is written, as an aid to readers.

> While Lojban does have 3 special characters- {.}, {,}, and {'}, they are used as letters, not as punctuation.

Yes, and they are even optional (well, I shouldn't think that the last ought to be optional). 

> 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}

Correct? Common, certainly. "Standard", perhaps, even. THough I haven't seen la.bab run together in most texts. 

>> 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.

Notice that I already acknowledged this. Capitalization is a convention commonly used in Lojban 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".

And yet there is no particular utility in this convention. It just looks LIKE SHOUTING. Spanish, one of the source languges for Lojban vocabulary, uses the acute accent to mark anomalous stress. If one does that, then one may be free to use capitalization in the conventional way it is used in other Latin-script languages. This enhances the readability of a text to anyone used to the convention (as most of us have been since we were four or five years of age).

> The Punctuation page describes where and how it is acceptable to use punctuation. However, such punctuation in not part of Lojban.

"Part of"? Is writing in Latin script "part of" Lojban? I see that there are Cyrillic and Tengwar orthographies. Are they "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.

Actually I wouldn't consider that to be useful. The speaker of Chinese or Irish knows that "ma" and "an" are interrogative particles. The whole sentence is marked with a question mark, as a matter of convention. One would not write *"An? dtuigeann tú". 

> {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.

Yes, I know.

> 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.

And there is something wrong with that?

I pointed out that my Cornish edition of Alice is used alongside the English edition by learners. The fact that they use similar typographic conventions is an advantage to the learners, in finding their place when making comparisons, for instance.

> 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.

Yes, well, we remember what "an" means in Irish, and also the negative interrogative particle "nach", and yet we are quite happy to write the question mark at the end of the sentence.

> > 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 did not say that I did not understand your stance. I said that I disagreed with it.

> 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.)

Really? Did you know that {ni'o} does not occur even once in Xorxe's translation of Alice? {ni'oni'o} occurs at the beginning of each chapter.

> 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.

Fine. If the text uses spaces between words, then the full stop can be used, redundantly, at the border between the end of a sentence and before space preceding the {i} which begins the next sentence. 

As I pointed out the 69-page PDF of Alice doesn't have any full stops in it at all. 

> 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.

Yes, because spoken language is just an utterance. This is really all very elementary writing theory. Obviously utterances can be written in various ways. In Burmese and Thai, they do not put anything at all between words. Theyjustrunthemalltogher andthenusespacestoseparateclauses.

> 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}.

Now, now. Conventions are devised by people. In the Latin script, certain conventions are used for most languages. Capitals at the beginning of sentences, full stops at the end, capitals for personal names. Sure, when Lojban was devised, other conventions were used. That does not mean that text in Lojban ceases to be Lojban if traditional Latin casing and punctuation conventions are used. After all, if Tengwar can be used, or Cyrillic, then why should there be some sort of "ban" on using "Victorian typographic conventions" for a book written in the nineteenth century? It's just a convention. You might not prefer it. You've stated that you've got preferences. 

> Certainly, you can write {la.meri,An.} as {la.meri,án.}. Accents are an acceptable form of non-standard stress demarcation.

Really? Since the beginning of the language? Or is this a more recent innovation?

> However, {la.Meri,án.} is just plain wrong.

No, it's just not a familiar convention. There's nothing "wrong" about it. It would be pronounced just exactly the same way. As it would if it were 

> 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.}

There is no intrinsic difference between "la parIs" or "la parís" or "la París". The text is the same. The pronunciation is the same. The conventions are different, that is all. 

> 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.

It is more a quasi-letter, since it can be omitted entirely. In the convention I am interested in, it would not be used as a letter or quasi-letter.

> 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".

While it is true that the question mark is not obligatory in Japanese, both 健全であるか。(with a full stop) and 
健全であるか? are acceptable renderings in Japanese.

> In Lojban, {xu ko kanro}. I personally feel that foreign punctuation, such as {?} and {"} would actually be detrimental.

Detrimental? In what way could the use of such redundant marks be "harmful"?

> In other words, far from being the help you seem to think they would be, I see them as a hindrance.

It is clear that you do see them as a "hindrance". As a hindrance to what, may I ask? In the middle of page 43 of the Alice PDF there is a paragraph of ten lines. Not a bit of punctuation in it. It is impossible to tell at a glance if there are any questions in that paragraph.

> I would not be at all surprised if the majority, if not the entirety, of my fellow Lojbanists agreed with me on this.

Jorge has already indicated that he is at least interested in discussing the matter. 

I am not, by the way, trying to reform Lojban or change anyone's habits. I am interested, however, in the typography of a particular book, and in a dialogue about legibility and writing conventions. I see from the archives of this list that the question of punctuation and capitalization arise from time to time. I see that John Cowan raised the question in 1992. 

Evidently it is an interesting question to some, even if not to you.

Fair enough?
Michael

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