Re: [lojban] SAE was lojban and PR

[Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu>]

On Thursday 27 October 2011 12:52:52 John E. Clifford wrote:
> SAE is a Whorfian term and has very little to do with the specifics of word
> class and paradigms.  It has more to do with the metaphysical view of the
> language.  SAE languages are based on things doing stuff and having
> properties.  Other languages are based on processes going on or masses
> dividing or kinds manifesting themselves.  The issue in which all the
> unfortunate weird stuff turns up is more or less an effort to see what sort
> of language Lojban is and to what extent it can mirror the other kinds.  As
> spoken first (or so) order logic, it is clearly SAE in its most
> Aristotelian form, some say it can be viewed as a mass/ kind language as
> well.

Could you give examples of sentences showing these other kinds of languages?

I found the Wikipedia page. Going down the lists:
1. Definite and indefinite articles ✓
2. relative clauses are postnominal but don't have inflected pronouns ×
3. periphrastic perfect: there are no participles ×
4. predicates to encode experiencers ✓
5. passive participle ×
6. anticausative verbs × I think, since the transitive is derived 
with "-gau, -ri'a, -zu'e"
7. dative external possessors ×
8. negative indefinite ✓ though it's two words
9. particle comparative × (there is "me'a" but it's not the usual)
10. equative adverbial ×
11. verb inflected for subject ×
12. differentiation between intensifier and reflexive ✓

Further features:
1. verb-initial yes/no ×
2. comparative inflection × it's a compound
3. A, B, and C ×
4. comitative and instrumental ×
5. second/two ×
6. no alienable/inalienable distinction ×
7. no clusivity distinction ×
8. no productive reduplication ✓
9. topic focus intonation word order × (focus can be expressed by word order, 
but topic is expressed by prenex)
10. SVO ✓
11. only one gerund ×
12. neither-nor ×
13. phrasal adverbs - not sure what, "still" is a single word
14. replacement of past by perfect ×

The third list: The first six items, which are all phonetic, all ✓. Morphology 
is both suffixing and prefixing and is not fusional at all. There is no 
morphosyntactic alignment.

Pierre

-- 
li ze te'a ci vu'u ci bi'e te'a mu du
li ci su'i ze te'a mu bi'e vu'u ci

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