From rob@twcny.rr.com Thu Aug 23 19:45:40 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: rob@telenet.net X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_3_2); 24 Aug 2001 02:45:39 -0000 Received: (qmail 80274 invoked from network); 24 Aug 2001 02:18:47 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by m8.onelist.org with QMQP; 24 Aug 2001 02:18:47 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO telenet.net) (204.97.152.225) by mta3 with SMTP; 24 Aug 2001 02:18:47 -0000 Received: from riff (ip-209-23-14-40.modem.logical.net [209.23.14.40]) by telenet.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id WAA07877 for ; Thu, 23 Aug 2001 22:18:45 -0400 Received: from rob by riff with local (Exim 3.22 #1 (Debian)) id 15a6YE-0000tB-00 for ; Thu, 23 Aug 2001 22:18:26 -0400 Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 22:18:24 -0400 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] soi vo'a: partial backflip Message-ID: <20010823221824.A3250@twcny.rr.com> Reply-To: rob@twcny.rr.com References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.18i X-Is-It-Not-Nifty: www.sluggy.com Sender: Rob Speer From: Rob Speer On Thu, Aug 23, 2001 at 04:12:08PM -0700, Nick NICHOLAS wrote: > > I've had a further think on lenu... soi vo'a, which xod brought up, and > I'm doing a backflip. > > It is clear from my survey of Lojban usage that Lojbanists want a > long-distance vo'a. It is also clear that in a couple of contexts, they > want it to be short-distance. Those contexts are (a) when the > long-distance interpretation is nonsense, because the embedded clause is > itself the x1 of the outer bridi (so long-distance vo'a would lead to dumb > recursion); (b) soi vo'a vo'e, where you'd have to be a masochist to want > long-distance. (Robin, in fact, used vo'a twice on the mailing list: once > long-distance --- which is why he was right in the lessons on pointing > out that vo'a is long-distance, when I thought he was wrong; and once in > lenu... soi vo'a --- where he used it short-distance.) > > I would prefer vo'a to be unambiguous in all cases; but usage has not, and > will continue to not respect that, and it's better to at least encode > these usage tendencies as conventions. Moreover, the fact that the cmavo > list and the refgramm contradict each other means this is now up in the > air; why not take account of usage in cleaning this up? I don't like this. vo'a was one of the pronouns for which it is possible to absolutely tell what its referent is; there aren't many others. It seems that the only problem is {soi vo'a}. This phrase sticks in people's minds because it _sounds_ like "vice versa", and because {vo'a} is one of the few examples the Book uses for {soi}. {soi lenei} is exactly the same number of syllables and works the way it's supposed to. Why not teach this in the lessons, thus avoiding future bad usage of {vo'a} without having to concede to the erroneous usage? -- Rob Speer