[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [lojban] baby words: willing


On Sun, Sep 22, 2013 at 2:18 AM, Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org> wrote:

"I'm willing to take you to play with the puppies, but I'm not
willing to carry you".

I would use [i'a / vi'o do'u /mi bredi lo nu] for "I'm willing to", which I take it was the main point of your query, but I have more trouble with "take someone somewhere". The "klama kansa" suggestion is fine, but it doesn't really mean the same thing, since it misses an important part of the picture, which is that they probably won't be going unless it's with you.

An interesting difference between English and Spanish when it comes to verbs of motion is that in English it is most common to encode the manner of motion lexically in the verb, while the direction is left to a complement, whereas in Spanish the opposite is the case, it's more common to encode the direction lexically in the verb while the manner is expressed as a complement. So for example whereas in English you might say "he run upstairs", or "she walked into the house", in Spanish you would tend to say "subió las escaleras corriendo" (he went-up the stairs running), "entró a la casa caminando" (she entered the house walking). Even though English does have verbs of motion that encode direction, such as "enter", "exit", "ascend", "descend", etc, and similarly Spanish does have verbs that encode manner of motion, the more natural and basic forms are different in each case. 

Now Lojban (sensibly) doesn't particularly favor either of those approaches in gismu. It doesn't have gismu with structure "x1 runs to x2 from x3", "x1 walks to x2 from x3", "x1 swims to x2 from x3", and so on, and neither does it have gismu with meanings like "x1 entered x2 from x3", "x1 exited to x2 from x3', "x1 went up to x2 from x3", and so on. Those can be constructed as lujvo if desired. 

In the case of "bevri" though, Lojban does seem to go with the English model. Can it be used with the basic transport sense "x1 takes x2 to x3 from x4 via x5", or does it necessarily have the additional manner component that "carry" and "haul" have? Unfortunately, we don't seem to have a gismu with the basic meaning of "x1 takes x2 to x3". Perhaps "zvagau" can be used for that? That would give:

vi'o do'u mi do zvagau lo nu kelci lo gercifnu .i ku'i vi'o nai do'u mi do bevri

I'm not very happy with "zvagau" though, because it doesn't indicate that x1 is also going to x3. What we need is bevri minus the bearing component, but while it's easy to add meaning to a word, it's hard to subtract from it.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.