From nicholas@uci.edu Sat Sep 22 14:42:43 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: nicholas@uci.edu X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_3_2_2); 22 Sep 2001 21:42:43 -0000 Received: (qmail 94372 invoked from network); 22 Sep 2001 21:42:42 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m8.onelist.org with QMQP; 22 Sep 2001 21:42:42 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO e4e.oac.uci.edu) (128.200.222.10) by mta1 with SMTP; 22 Sep 2001 21:42:42 -0000 Received: from [128.195.186.89] (dialin53a-79.ppp.uci.edu [128.195.186.89]) by e4e.oac.uci.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA11313 for ; Sat, 22 Sep 2001 14:42:41 -0700 (PDT) X-Sender: nicholas@e4e.oac.uci.edu Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2001 14:46:56 -0700 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: RE: [lojban] Dumb answers to good questions From: Nick Nicholas cu'u la xod. > And why must Lojban express every nuance of English? ?! Lojban must be able to be as expressive as any human language. It is so by design and ideology and intent. Besides, focus is as basic a nuance to human communication as any. I know we've got ideological differences about Lojban up the wazoo, but how can you imply Lojban needn't distinguish between "It was John that Bill helped" and "It was Bill that helped John"? Every language does that, because every language has to express what in a sentence you're actually concentrating on; it's the "robots" you bemoan that wouldn't. How languages do this is of course different --- most of them do it with word order; and I'm not convinced And is right that it should be logicosemantic rather than pragmatic (i.e., in Lojban terms, attitudinal.) (And, remind me: is is pragmatic in Chinese, or does Chinese pull out particles?) But a Lojban less expressive than English? In something as basic as focus? No thanks. Nick Nicholas, UCI, USA. nicholas@uci.edu http://www.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis "Must I, then, be the only one to be beheaded now?" "Why, did you want everybody to be beheaded for your consolation?" Epictetus, Discourses 1.1.