Re: [lojban] Should I quit learning Lojban?

This is all getting very confusing to me; I either don't get the point of various comments or I don't see the relevance of them to what I think is the topic at hand (which long ago ceased to be about learning Lojban -- we ought to change the title). Let try to sort some things out for my own benefit.

SAEss is a late derivative (and probably the result of a misunderstanding) of SAEsl, a term Whorf apparently coined. It happens that all of the ss languages are also sl, which reenforces the confusion.

The fact that Lojban has adjectives and verbs and common nouns -- or doesn't -- is largely irrelevant to the question whether it is a SAE ("thing"), property, process or sensation language. It can (more or less by design) reproduce the effects of all sorts of languages, but to do so, it must convert properties or processes or sensations into things. Well, not convert actually, since they already are in Lojban -- a property is a set of things (and sets are things, too) or a function (another thing) from worlds (things) to such sets. I assume that the converse would happen in a process or property or sensation language, with things represented by properties or processes or sensations, as the case might be.

Nor does the fact that an NP can refer to several things matter or even that it does in a particular situation (xorlo -- in one of its later and more solid forms -- to the rescue. Note that {le broda} refers to just what it does and the existence of other things like that are irrelevant, unlike {lo broda}in some circumstances). (the bit about {zo'e} is one of the stranger myths, since {zo'e} is merely a contradictory word without a real use -- a weak foundation for anything -- while {lo}, for example, is quite precise and clear).

I don't get the Sumerian story (I would have assumed it was announcing a new king, for one thing). The translation into English is, inevitably thing-language; don't know what the original was like but I don't see anything particularly property languageish here.

Is the unclarity just a confusion between verbs and processes, adjectives and properties, nouns and things? It seems so, though I don't believe any of us actually has such confusions (though I have to admit that Whorf might).

But we do talk as though we had this. I suspect (without great confidence, admittedly) that property / process /sensation grammars start S => NP + VP. The difference is somewhere else and I don't know where it is, exactly.

From: la gleki <gleki.is.my.name@gmail.com>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sunday, April 28, 2013 5:16 AM
Subject: Re: [lojban] Should I quit learning Lojban?

On Sunday, April 28, 2013 10:27:20 AM UTC+4, Pierre Abbat wrote:

On Saturday, April 27, 2013 22:26:34 la gleki wrote:
> In {la .alis. cu remna} Alice can refer to several people as well.
> Referential use of {le} can help if two participants of the conversation
> have agreed for which object to use it however even in that case there
> might be misunderstanding ( what if speaker A called an apple {le plise}
> but the speaker B unlike the speaker B noticed several apples around).
>
> Other brivla in Lojban are all properties.
> I guess in {lo plise cu xunre} {xunre} is a property, right?
>
> Then for me the following raising doesn't mean much.
> {mi viska lo plise noi xunre}
> {mi viska lo xunre}
>
> And of course lo plise = zo'e noi plise.
>
> (If we for the first time in our life see an orange we might call it {ti
> plise ga'a mi'a}, so {plise} is also a property).
>
> So I just can't see why Lojban is SAE.

SAE sensu stricto includes Romance, Germanic, and various other European
languages. SAE sensu lato includes, as far as I can see, all of Indo-European,
Finno-Ugric, Turkic, Semitic, and probably other families. Either way, it's
defined by properties of the language, not by belonging to certain families.

As far as I remember [sei u'i mi morji jenai vedli ;) ] the first written record in human history was a Sumerian record that said "A new divine Sun has appeared in the sky". We can assume that it was a supernova star (I don't remember in what constellation it is located now).

This is a funny fact because then the human written history starts with the fact of dealing with property language and actually extending unique objects to properties.

So what, Sumerian is also SAE and property-lang at the same time like English? What's the point?

That inhabitants of Tlon *had* to use only properties in their speech? But as I show everything can be seen as properties.

Lojban is definitely not SAE s.s. I think it is not SAE s.l. either, but
appears to be because most Lojbanists are native speakers of SAE languages. If
we raised Lojban speakers for whom e.g. "le blabi cu mlatu" or "se mlatu le
blabi" were no stranger a construction than "le mlatu cu blabi", Lojban as
they spoke it would not be SAE s.l.

I'm not sure I understand "things with holes and things to plug the holes",
but unlike all the language families I listed above, Lojban has no adjectives.

isn't NOI or even tanru adjectives?

Lojban does have nouns, but their use is severely restricted compared to SAE
languages, common nouns being generally expressed by verbs.

Really? You mean that only KOhA, {zo'e}, {da}, cmene etc. are nouns?

I've never had any problems with {lo ... ku} even though it is a derivation of zo'e + NOI.

brivla are always verbs. (mlatu = to-be-a-cat etc.)

> I have the following case unsolved:
> <quote>The classic contrast between an SAE language and a process one is
> the name of a wet spot in the Grand Canyon area. The Anglos call it
> Weeping Spring, a thing with a property. The Hopi call it Whiting
> Downward, a process.</quote>
>
> How to say "I'm near the whiting downward" in this language then?
> I guess in Lojban we can't say {mi jibni lo nu farlu}. How can i be near a
> process? I can only be near some atoms taking part in that process.
> How do the Hopi solve this problem?

I'd say it in Lojban "mi jibni le mo'ini'a blabi" (or "la mo'ini'a blabi"
since it's a name).

Exactly. But {le blabi} is a noun.

I don't know Hopi. I assume you do not mean "mo'ini'a
merlanu".

Yes, I want Hopi's solution, not lojbanic cheating.

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