Re: [lojban] Should I quit learning Lojban?

The fact that you *can* do something in Lojban is not terribly important; the orange-in-the-sky tanru could obviously be well-formed and meaningful. But it wouldn't be a name without the 'la' to bring in the thing which bears it. The point about Northern Tlo"n and property languages generally is that descent doesn't happen. One of the roughest tests for SWH is Sanskrit, a thoroughly SAE language to all appearances yet used to express philosophies across the range from Aristotelian to Platonic and beyond to pure property and pure process and even instantaneous sense-data forms. Of course, it usually fails in the details, but it goes an awful long way (as trying to translate some Navya-Nyaya treatises showed me -- dammit, where's the effing subject?).

aUI, also thoroughly SAE, has the problem of limited vocabulary (worse than toki pona even) and so the need to devise metaphorical uses practically from the get-go. But that has nothing to do with the situation we're discussing. I don't know squat about Ithkuil but rumor has it that it is just Lojban gone wild, with every possible verb modifier known to man or beast and a few that have escaped even the Archons and Aeons. Again, not obviously relevant here.

From: Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Saturday, April 27, 2013 9:08 AM
Subject: Re: [lojban] Should I quit learning Lojban?

On Sat, Apr 27, 2013 at 10:50 AM, la gleki <gleki.is.my.name@gmail.com> wrote:

On Saturday, April 27, 2013 4:24:46 PM UTC+4, xorxes wrote:

On Sat, Apr 27, 2013 at 4:55 AM, la gleki <gleki.is...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Saturday, April 27, 2013 2:06:27 AM UTC+4, xorxes wrote:

There's one language I know of that fits that description: the language of the northern hemisphere of Tlön. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tl%C3%B6n,_Uqbar,_Orbis_Tertius or read the full story here: http://art.yale.edu/file_columns/0000/0066/borges.pdf

Damn it. It has been in my bookmarks for years. Anyway "it mooned" is just {ca'o lunra} because obviously {lunra} is a verb. And I can't see much difference from "it was the dog all o'er the road" from the Wave lessons.

"It mooned" is from the languages of the southern hemisphere:

"The preceding applies to the languages of the southern hemisphere. In

those of the northern hemisphere (on whose Ursprache there is very
little data in the Eleventh Volume) the prime unit is not the verb, but the
monosyllabic adjective. The noun is formed by an accumulation of

adjectives. They do not say "moon," but rather "round airy-light on dark"
or "pale-orange-of-the-sky" or any other such combination. In the
example selected the mass of adjectives refers to a real object, but this is

purely fortuitous."

Quote: <One of the imagined languages of Tlön lacks nouns. Its central units are "impersonal verbs qualified by monosyllabic suffixes or prefixes which have the force of adverbs." Borges lists a Tlönic equivalent of "The moon rose above the water": hlör u fang axaxaxas mlö, meaning literally "Upward behind the onstreaming it mooned".>

Yes, as the story says, that applies to the languages of the southern hemisphere of Tlön. What's your point?

As for "pale-orange-of-the-sky" i can do that with tanru or lujvo. And btw it's more of aUI or similar languages (even Ithkuil might do, and there is also Arahau with only 100 root words which leads to the same kind of problems as with aUI, see J.Clifford's lecture on youtube).

So again I can't see any problems with expressing that even in English. Indeed it's just "pale-orange-of-the-sky" may be with a fixed meaning. What's wrong?

What's wrong with what? You asked for an example of pc's "languages which go for properties only", "the only elements of the second sort of languages are properties". I just cited the only example of such languages I know of.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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