- { .i } will confuse speakers of English, etc. who don't have it in their native tongue
(Underlying suggestion: We should adopt a style that makes lojban appear friendly & familiar)
- { .i } only makes sense when used in a { ni'o } topic
(Underlying suggestion: We should avoid using cmavo out of any dependent context.)
(Or perhaps: Using { .i } without { ni'o } may result in a poor translation.)
Respective coutner-arguments might be:
- According to the tatoeba style guide, these sentence are supposed to represent authentic utterances. We shouldn't have to make any cosmetic compromises in word choice that would not reflect natural lojban usage. However, it may be the case that dropping the { .i } IS more authentic and natural lojban.
- According to the tatoeba style guide, they don't want you trying to submit multiple sentences (or fragments/words) as a single entry. I can only assume that they aren't afraid of certain sentences that may perfectly grammatical appearing nonsensical or incomplete due to loss of context.
Particularly, if we limited lojban cmavo usage only to cases that fully specified any linked dependencies, then there would be several dozen cmavo that we could never use as they only make sense in a larger context.
As for { .i }'s place in a translation, the tatoeba style guide also says to feel free to translate multiple sentences in a language for each possible additional inflection/variation that makes sense. So, if the sentence we're translating *could* be a continuation *or* the start of a new topic, perhaps we could even submit both a { ni'o } and �{.i } - prepended sentence.
ni'o =p
{ .i } bickerings specifically aside,�
Bigger Topic: Lojban tatoeba style guide!
I still think it would be a good general rule to submit two lojban sentences for each translation sentence: one briefer (or even briefest), and one with all elidable terminators present. This way, when someone searches for all lojban sentences that use a terminator, they can see the sentence with and without that terminator, and where it falls in relation to other terminators.
The reason we can't put [optional] square-bracketed words in there is because they explicitly prohibit any grammtical, linguistic or other editorial information in the sentences. They are meant to be pieces of language that can be used in or out of the context of language learning.
I don't have any strong feelings one way or the other about { .i }. Can we hear some clamor about this proposal for recommended brief/verbose translation pairs?
co'o mi'e korbi
On Sat, Nov 6, 2010 at 06:56, Remo Dentato
<rdentato@gmail.com> wrote:
On Saturday, November 6, 2010, Lindar <lindarthebard@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 11:05 PM, Oren <
get.oren@gmail.com> wrote:
>> P.S. I think I've been swayed not to prepend all my lojban sentences with {
>> .i }
>
> That's not an option, really.
> {ni'o} starts new topics, {.i} continues them.
> If you don't use them, then how do you split apart sentences?
Oren, my point was exactly that people not familiar with lojban would
have been confused by the ".i" at the beginning. I guess you were
meaning that all the lojban sentences should be considered as a single
sequence and hence each should be separated by the preceding one by
{.i}?
I find it too convoluted as reasoning. �I would prefer not put it at
all and neither put {ni'o} and any other particle that is not strictly
related to the translation.
Anyway, I think we should decide a common way of doing it so that the
sentences appear to be uniform.
If you could explain better why you would prefer to have {.i} at the
beginning we may discuss about it.
remo
--
Oren Robinson
(315) 569-2888
102 Morrison Ave
Somerville, MA 02144