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

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2001 13:03:05 -0400

At 02:51 PM 9/25/01 +0100, And Rosta wrote:
>#Be that as it may, I find in looking at ancient postings that this came up
>#once before, from you, and Cowan opined that ba'e was the focus
>#marker. Much earlier, back in 1991, we apparently said that focus was
>#conveyed primarily by position, with primary focus on the beginning of the
>#sentence.
>
>It would help if you could include pointers to the messages in question,
>so we can see whether we concur with your reading of them. The only
>focus marker I remember is "kau".

I just plugged "focus" into Jay's archive searcher. The following were on 
the first 2 pages of 10 of the 167 references:

http://balance.wiw.org/~jkominek/lojban/9110/msg00027.html
http://balance.wiw.org/~jkominek/lojban/9712/msg00036.html

Also on the first page:
http://balance.wiw.org/~jkominek/lojban/9710/msg00228.html
deals with "even" as a focus marker in English, which has come up multiple 
times as well, probably not using the word "focus" every 
time. Unfortunately "even" may be too common a word to do a search on. It 
gives 3012 hits, though the couple listed first have "even" in the subject 
and may indeed be about that issue.

> >#The logical way of marking focus, if focus is an important feature of
>#>language,
>#>#is to ... *mark it*.
>#>
>#>You can't mark it if you don't know what it is -- the marking would be
>#>meaningless.
>#
>#I don't understand this statement. If you don't know what the focus is,
>#then how can you even refer to it?
>
>I mean that if you don't know what Focus is then you can't mark it.
>It's no good saying "Let this cmavo signify Blah" is you are unable to
>offer any sort of adequate defintition or characterization of Blah.

Actually, it is a tried and true Loglan and Lojban design technique %^)

Look at kau, tu'a, and all manner of other things (and ce'u, which was not 
my addition but was clearly added before it was characterized). I've had 
pretty good instincts as to when something is needed in the language, even 
if I cannot formally define it. And I don't mind being wrong in my initial 
characterization if something turns out to be more useful ("useful" being 
key here, because however we may baseline the design, we are not baselining 
usage).

>Words -- and linguistic forms in general -- are pairings of sound and
>meaning. A sound alone is not a word. Until you add the meaning, then,
>you don't have a proper word.

%^)

We must have a lot of improper words in Lojban. I'm glad we seem to be 
able to communicate using them in spite of this.

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