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

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2001 10:45:53 -0400

At 01:32 AM 9/22/01 +0100, And Rosta wrote:
>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

la bil darxi la djan bi'u

>It was Bill that hit John

la bil bi'u darxi la djan

>What John did was hit Bill

la djan darxi bi'u la bil.

>What John did to Bill was hit him

lenu la djan gasnu tu'a la bil zo'u jy darxi

>What happened to Bill was John hit him

lenu gasnu tu'a la bil. zo'u la djan darxi by
lenu la bil lifri zo'u la djan darxi by

>It is John and Bill that are respectively x, y such that x hit y

da po'u la djan bi'u de po'u la bil bi'u zo'u da darxi de
or explicitly using "respectively" operator
da fa'u de vu'o po'u bi'u la djan fa'u la bil zo'u da darxi de
or having more fun with multiple prenexes
la djan la bil zo'u da po'u jy de po'u by zo'u da darxi de

The latter took more time trying to figure out what the English meant than 
it did to render into Lojban. Hopefully I got the emphasis down.

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

I'm sure you could come up with a hard one if you tried %^)

But whether you could say it clearly in English as opposed to logical 
notation might be tougher.

> > 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.

ba'e will draw focus, whether that is the reason used or not. Overriding 
ba'e drawing focus to use it for some other purpose could be trickier.

> > > (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.

I disagree. Only if you have a conflicting example, where the focus is on 
x but y is the new information, would it be tricky, and I'm not sure how 
to do that in English.

But the combination of zo'u and bi'u can be powerful as I hope I showed above.

>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.

I'm not sure it is broken, but then as champion glorkjunkie, I might not 
recognize when I am glorking. (These weird words that beginners don't 
understand: can someone bi'u come up with ba'e Lojban words for these? If 
we're going to use jargon, we ought to do it in-language so people have 
some idea what we ba'e mean!)

(How was that example of multiple emphasis and focus, albeit in English 
with subtitles?)

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