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

From: "And Rosta" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2001 23:38:18 +0100

lojbab:
> At 07:23 PM 9/22/01 +0100, <[email-masked]> wrote:
> >Xod:
> > > On Sat, 22 Sep 2001, 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 djan. zo'u B darxi D
> >
> >lojban prenex is normally said to be topic rather than focus.
>
> Is the focus something other than the topic in this example (and if so,
> please explain)? Your examples need to display a distinction if you want
> us to make it.

I'm not clear what it is you want me to explain. To mark something as
topic is to indicate that it is the thing that the bridi is about. To
mark is as focus is to indicate that it is the key, centrally important
piece of information being conveyed by the bridi.

> It'd be a very bad thing if they couldn't be translated into Lojban, but
> >the grammar of UI is plenty powerful enough to translate them. However,
> >to my mind, the semantics of focus calls not for a discursive but for
> >the kind of logicosyntactic manipulations evident in the English.
>
> Why?

Because logical solutions are the most lojbanic, and because evidence
from natlangs and from the very little formal semantic analysis of focus
that I have seen seems to indicate that the basis of focus is these
logicosyntactic manipulations.

> Specifically, why must Lojban convey things by logicosyntactic
> manipulations merely because English does?

na'i

Reread what I wrote.

>
> > But I
> >do think Lojban will be able to do this. I'm not sure how to do the
> >"What ... was ... hit" ("wh-cleft") versions in Lojban,
>
> But why must Lojban cleft things in the English manner?

See above -- because that is what is closest to the logic/semantics of
focus, according to the very slender evidence available to me.

> > > Why not? What else could "ba'e D darxi B" mean, besides "*John* hit
> > > Bill."?
> >
> >the emphasis needn't be focus ("It was John that hit Bill"). It could,
> >for instance, be metalinguistic, e.g. "Look, I'm calling him _John_,
> >not _Johnny_, because he intensely dislikes the latter".
>
> And how is it not focus to make such an emphasis? You seem to be using
> focus to mean some particular kind of semantic emphasis that excludes
> others, and it isn't clear to me how they are distinguished. I will of
> course consult my references on the topic of "focus", but it would be
> useful for you to clarify what you mean by it.

I mean focus in the standard linguistics sense. It's not an area I've
done much thinking about, so I don't want to offer a definition, because
it's liable to muddy the waters. (Also, since I think the essence of
focus is the logical manipulation already touched on, any attempt by
me to give a precise definition would be biased.) It might be more up
Nick's street, and some judicious quoting from reliable textbooks or
online sources might be in order.

--And.