Re: [lojban] Suggestion for a new animacy marker in Lojban.

[Veijo Vilva <veijo.vilva@gmail.com>]

On 4 August 2012 10:48, Gleki Arxokuna <gleki.is.my.name@gmail.com> wrote:

It's all based on the analysis of existing languages.

Sure, English example is not fine.

But Navajo for instance has the following hierarchy.

humans/lightning → infants/big animals → med-size animals → small animals → insects → natural forces → inanimate objects/plants → abstractions

In Finnish we don't have separate pronouns for the two sexes, and in informal language these days it's more like a norm to use an inanimate pronoun for everything. Japanese has no "real" pronouns and quite often does just fine by eliding the subject or the object or both of them and letting the context resolve the meaning. We have a scale from nil to what ever complexity the human mind has deemed culturally necessary.

 

On Sat, Aug 4, 2012 at 12:35 AM, Gleki Arxokuna <gleki.is.my.name@gmail.com> wrote:

Suggestion for a new animacy marker in Lojban.

Many if not most languages divide all predicates into levels of animacy.

English, for instance, has at least two levels. These are the pronouns for them

1. Animate. He/she

2. Inanimate. It

This allows quickly determine agents of most actions.

Example:

The woman was looking at the mirror. It was ugly.

Let's try it in Lojban.

{lo ninmu pu ca'o catlu lo minra .i ta pu tolmelbi}

 

Here I'd tend towards the Japanese solution of eliding the subject or rather go a step further and elide even the tense:

  {lo ninmu pu ca'o catlu lo minra .i tolmelbi}

  mu'o mi'e veion

--

  web site: http://galactinus.net/vilva/

  on Google+: https://plus.google.com/106533767817816079660/posts

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.