Vocatives are used in the text by the characters, but only with cmevla, not with the descriptive "names".
I grant that some descriptive phrases in English are names, e.g. a pub named "The Prancing Horse" has a three-word name, starting with "The".
But in English a personal name never starts with "the".
It's "Fast Eddy", "Slim Pickings", "Minnesota Fats", "Deep Throat", etc, not "The Fast Eddy".
That clue shows that "The Tin Woodman" refers to a man, but not by a personal name, not even a descriptive name.
The fact that the phrases in question are capitalized by the English-speaking author does not indicate they are names, as we can see by examining his usage.
Below I quote illustrative examples from the book.
"I am a Woodman, and made of tin." is clearly an indefinite reference, and it gets capitalized.
Similarly, "a great Lion bounded into the road.", "and another a Lion.", " "A Lion!" cried the little Queen", "Others of the Monkeys" are indefinite.
The author doesn't use capitals to indicate use of a name, but rather a reference to a main character, it seems.
"Yes," answered the tin man;
"Oil my neck, first," replied the Tin Woodman.
The Tin Woodman gave a sigh of satisfaction
"No, my head is quite empty," answered the Woodman;
"I was born the son of a woodman who chopped down trees
story of the Tin Woodman,
although the Woodman fell over in the road
"And I am going to ask him to give me a heart," said the Woodman.
"Or give me a heart," said the Tin Woodman.
The Tin Woodman knew very well he had no heart,
"I am Dorothy," answered the girl; "and these are my friends, the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion;
"This funny tin man," she answered, "killed the Wildcat
"I am a Woodman, and made of tin.
"Never mind the patch," exclaimed the happy Woodman.
"We must be very careful here," said the kind-hearted Woodman,
a great Lion bounded into the road.
But, to the Lion's surprise,
slapped the Lion upon his nose
"I didn't bite him," said the Lion,
a coward like me," continued the Lion, sadly.
"But that isn't right. The King of Beasts shouldn't be a coward,"
"I know it," returned the Lion,
"Do you think Oz could give me courage?" asked the cowardly Lion.
"Then, if you don't mind, I'll go with you," said the Lion,
presently Toto and the Cowardly Lion had
"Because that isn't the way we Lions do these things," he replied.
of the river, and at last came upon their friend the Lion, lying
"A Lion!" cried the little Queen; "why, he would eat us all up."
"Oh, no;" declared the Scarecrow; "this Lion is a coward."
the great Lion, of which they were much afraid.
"...why is that great Lion with you?"
and another a Lion. None of them is fit to work,
and the lion," he said to the Woodman,
Then the Witch looked at the big, shaggy Lion and asked,
it could call three times upon the Winged Monkeys,
Some of the Monkeys seized the Tin Woodman
Others of the Monkeys caught the Scarecrow,
than two of the Monkeys caught Dorothy in their arms
one little Monkey seized Toto and flew after them,
"My grandfather was at that time the King of the Winged Monkeys which
And with another bow the Monkey King spread his wings
"It shall be done," said the King, and at once the Winged Monkeys
The Monkeys had set them down near a farm house,
I still don't see a reason to view these phrases as names in English or in lojban.
la bremenli
On Wednesday, November 29, 2017 at 11:06:38 AM UTC-8, And Rosta wrote:
On 29 November 2017 at 16:05, <vpbr...@gmail.com> wrote:And,
As I read it, xorlo "le" and "la" are pretty much the same as in CLL, except for default quantification.
In CLL around 6.2.6 I understand that a name (a cmene or a la sumti) is an arbitrary identifier, attached to something by the act of naming, instead of by reference to dictionary meanings and observation.
`` The last descriptor of this section is “la”, which indicates that the selbri which follows it has been dissociated from its normal meaning and is being used as a name. Like “le” descriptions, “la” descriptions are implicitly restricted to those I have in mind. ''
In the original translation of "the Cowardly Lion" as "la tolvirnu cinfo", for example, this identification is used because the critter is cowardly and he is a lion, it's not some kind of CB handle.
None of the "la" expressions I'm concerned about ever get used with a vocative.
They are descriptive phrases that seem to me to be very standard cases for using "le".
We should write "le xamgu termakfyfetsi", "le smani", "le rijno cutci", etc.
Is there a variety of lojban where this is not the case?We can see from the capitalization that "Cowardly Lion" is a name; it may or may not be etymologically aptronymous, and even if it is aptronymous, the underlying description, "cowardly lion", is only the reason for why that phrase became CL's name and is not the name itself. And if the names are not used vocatively, that just suggests that the name is applied by the narrator and not by the characters. That was as far as the thinking behind my original reply got. It now also occurs to me that "la tolvirnu cinfo" doesn't distinguish between "Cowardly Lion" and "the Cowardly Lion", but I can't think of how that English distinction, whose semantic import (if there is any) is not at all apparent to me, might be rendered in Lojban. "Le tolvirnu cinfo" is, of course, not a name; and it is well to remember that "le" may be glossed "a(n)" just as well as "the", so it's as if CL were constantly referred to as "a cowardly lion", which is something nobody but Jaqen H'ghar would do. "le" primarily encodes specificity whereas English names (not even those of "the X" sort) don't.It's interesting to wonder what translation would have been suitable had the original not been a name, and if instead the character were simply always referred to as "the cowardly lion": the main semantic ingredient contributed by the "the" then would be the definiteness. "lo bi'u nai tolvirnu cinfo" captures the definiteness but of course foregrounds it too much, and probably "lo tolvirnu cinfo" would be the best rendition.What motivated me to make my original response was not just that "le tolvirnu cinfo" is very inferior to "la tolvirnu cinfo" as a rendition of the English but also that it was a change inflicted on somebody else's translation and furthermore was inflicted on it as if it were a correction rather than an incorrection.--And.
la bremenli
On Monday, November 27, 2017 at 2:20:30 AM UTC-8, And Rosta wrote:On 26 Nov 2017 16:36, <vpbr...@gmail.com> wrote:
One substantive global kind of change was made.
Among all the uses of "la", there were many cases where it is followed by a verb phrase, and where the _expression_ is not at all a name, but a description, for example "la tolvirnu cinfo".
All such non-names got "la" replaced with "le".That looks a deleterious change, unless post-xorlo "le" has been completely redefined from what it formerly was. The original "la" captures properly the English, whereas semitraditional "le" does not at all. (By "semitraditional" I mean to exclude the habitual solecistic misuse that prevailed in early Lojban writing, where "le" was used as the default gadri, with sillinesses such as "le nu".)--And.--
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