[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: [lojban] soi disant soi dissent
On Fri, 24 Aug 2001, Nick NICHOLAS wrote:
>
> cu'u la xod.
>
> >> If you look at all the usage Nick collected together, you also find short
> >> distance vo'a not just with soi.
>
> >Nick only listed it once that I can see, and it was an accident (didn't
> >close off with kei).
>
> Que?
I think I read And's sentence incorrectly.
> >That's good. We all want the impossible: a compromise that gives us clear
> >usage of vo'a from now on, but deviates as little as possible from old
> >usage!!
>
> I'm sorry, but I still thought I'd formulated that:
>
> vo'a is always long-distance
> * except when used with soi (Robin Turner)
> * and when used in an embedded phrase which would end up being the
> referent of vo'a (Colin Fine, Mark Shoulson) -- to avoid recursion
You also said "when context overwhelmingly allows it", which I, as an
alleged "naturalist", can't stand. I also have not been convinced that
recursion is always a bad thing.
> With the possible exception of the final clause (which I won't actually
> insist on), isn't this precisely your "most obvious answer"?
I think it would be a lot clearer if soi and only soi were able to change
the meaning of vo'a.
You can say "this
> usage was mistaken", xod, but doesn't that contradict "let usage decide"?
> If not, how not? --- I'm honestly confused here.
Something has got to bend.
And we ARE determining usage. Our usage, from now on.
-----
"It is not enough that an article is new and useful. The Constitution
never sanctioned the patenting of gadgets. [...] It was never the object
of those laws to grant a monopoly for every trifling device, every
shadow of a shade of an idea, which would naturally and spontaneously
occur to any skilled mechanic or operator in the ordinary progress of
manufactures." -- Supreme Court Justice Douglas, 1950