On 28/01/2015 07:34, Gleki Arxokuna
wrote:
«I saw a plane flying over Zurich» can be rendered as {mi puku viska lo vinji ca lo nu (zo'e) vofli pa'o lo gapru la .tsurix.}; this Lojban sentence is structurally unambiguous, but leaves explicitly the identity of the flying thing to the context (zo'e vofli). As for the English sentence, in addition to not being clear about what is flying, it's parse tree is ambiguous, "flying over Zurich" could either attach to "a plane" (as an adjective would do), or act as an adverbial (targetting the proposition "I saw a plane" as a whole, if I'm not mistaken). As for the Lojban sentence proposed by Gleki, {mi puku viska lo vinji ca lo nu lo se xi vei pa .a re no'a cu vofli ga'u la .tsurix.}, it can be simplified to {mi puku viska lo vinji ca lo nu ri .a mi vofli ga'u la .tsurix.}, which is similar to what I suggested but having «me and/or the aircraft» as the flying thing; this is also structurally unambiguous, and very explicitly not saying what exactly is flying (me, the aircraft or both?). mi'e la .ilmen. mu'o -- 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/d/optout. |