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Re: RE: Re[2]: [lojban] Dr. James Cooke Brown



From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <lojbab@lojban.org>

At 05:26 PM 02/18/2000 +0300, Vjacxeslav' Ivanov' wrote:
> > > From: Vjacxeslav' Ivanov'
>..
> > > Yes, uniting WOULD BE... But how is it possible? The only way
> > > is to absorbe one community by another, but this way is close,
> > > because ekzemple me - I will hardly relearn from the very
> > > beginning to Lojban - the same will say most of lojbanists, I
> > > think.
> > >
> > > So, uu, our ways are parallel...
>..
> > choosing some appropriate lexical indicator at the start of the text
> > one could indicate whether one were writing Loglan in classical or Lojban
> > mode. A stage beyond that would be to define word-for-word equivalences
> > between the Lojban and classical Loglan lexicons.
>
>Can such equivalents be found, if the classical and lojban grammars have 
>differences, as I understand?

The classical and lojban grammars have some minor differences, but in the 
direction of classical to Lojban the differences can be dealt with very 
simply and mechanically.  There are several features in Lojban that have 
not yet been added to TLI Loglan, both lexicon and grammar, and thus 
translating from Lojban to classical grammar is not always easy.  For 
example, the direct word for word substitution:

Hue  Slavik ja  lentaa  la Loglan
mi'e slavik noi banta'a la loglan

is identical in meaning.

Lojban on the other hand has optional aspectual tenses (like Russian) as 
well as simple tenses, and no doubt Slavik can understand that there can be 
difficulties in translating both perfective and imperfective tenses into 
the simple tenses of the classical language.

Lojban also has a large number of attitudinals beyond the classical 
ones.  TLI Loglan adopted the same solution as did Lojban for ad hoc 
attitudinals:

soi crano
sei cisma

But Lojbanists usually use "zo'o" to express humor, with optional modifiers 
for intensity (as in %^), "ROTL", and "ROTLMAO" for varying intensities of 
Usenet humor)

>  The idea is rather interesting. For example, I can start my speeches by 
> smth. like "Hue Slavik ja lentaa la Loglan" :)) Or we shall invent a 
> "little word" for this... Though in Loglan most l-initial little words 
> are already "articles".

The classical language has limits in the number of little words/cmavo, 
which Lojban overcame serendipitously with the diphthong splitting 
apostrophe. (The apostrophe was originally added because we felt that the 
ambiguous diphthongs were an unacceptable feature - this is the question as 
to whether a compound like "laglii" would be pronounced /lag,LI,i/ or 
/LAG,lii/, as well as whether there was a meaningful difference between 
"eo" and "ei,o" - we used the comma to distinguish glided syllables the 
latter as does TLI in pronunciation guides, but raised it above to an 
apostrophe to indicate a devoiced glide, which sounds like "h" to English 
speakers.  The fact that it increased the number of VV pairs when nearly 
all possible little words were in use was a pleasant side effect.)

Incidentally, the latter discussion points out the one problem with the 
"hoa" and "xo'a" introducers of the other language/dialect - while the two 
words look different in print, in speech they would likely be heard as the 
same word in either version, and thus be ineffective at indicating a change 
in dialect.  Indeed, in our alternate orthography originally established to 
make rapprochement based on Lojban more attractive to the TLI Loglan 
community, the alternate orthography form of "xo'a" is exactly "hoa".

lojbab



>Hue Slavik, ji le ruski.
>=============
>Spopa rana!
>http://loglan.chat.ru

----
lojbab                                             lojbab@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA                    703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:  http://www.lojban.org (newly updated!)


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