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

From: "And Rosta" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2001 01:32:37 +0100

lojbab:
> 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.

What'd help here would be Lojban translations of

It was John that Bill hit
It was Bill that hit John
What John did was hit Bill
What John did to Bill was hit him
What happened to Bill was John hit him
It is John and Bill that are respectively x, y such that x hit y

etc. -- Using structural methods of isolating the focused phrase.

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

Not bad, but there are other reasons for emphasis besides focus, so
ba'e will no do as the focus marker.

> > (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. 

bi'u(nai) is for given/new rather than for focus. While focused information
is new, not all new information is focused. So nor will bi'u do as the
focus marker.

More generally, though, as with po'o this is a 'problem' that should
be fixed by logical/structural means rather than primarily by a 
discursive.

--And.