Subject: Re: [lojban] Dumb answers to good questions

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 18:01:10 -0400

At 01:59 PM 9/20/01 +0100, And Rosta wrote:
>So the general Lojban strategy I'd propose would be twofold
>(a) a method of isolating the focused item along the lines sketched
>above,

We have a prenex approach to this where it is a sumti you want to draw 
focus to, as well as fronting and trailing markedly, which brings focus by 
the marking.

ba'e of course directly adds emphasis, but does not indicate why, which 
draws focus.

> (b) an optional UI to mark the focused item -- the equivalent
>of English intonation's focal stress ("Bob HIT Bill", etc.).

The closest we have to this beside ba'e is bi'u/bi'unai which were 
originally intended by Colin Fine who proposed them to deal with one 
particular reason for focus. I suspect that if we wanted to add more 
capability in this area it would be to add words intended to convey other 
specific reasons for focus. These are good candidates for experimental 
cmavo because the added cmavo will inherently draw focus even if it isn't 
known (and if known will indicate why the focus is drawn)

lojbab
--
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org