Subject: Re: [lojban] a construal of lo'e & le'e

From: Pierre Abbat <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2001 12:27:53 -0400

On Saturday 27 October 2001 00:29, Invent Yourself wrote:
> This is what I expected, and I look forward to another go-round of the
> veridicality debate which will necessarily arise, not so I can argue a
> position but so I can re-learn the theory. The idea of "mi claxu ro
> fipybirka" is intriguing, and illustrates a place where using a logical
> language actually has an impact on usage! Usually I wonder why anyone
> bothers with the appelation of "logical", since most sentences translate
> conceptually without alteration into English. Yet here is a case where the
> simple translation "I lack every fish fin" is interesting English.

Another construction where using a logical language impacts usage is 
statements like "The aardvark is a mammal." The literal translation of this 
is {le rikteropu cu mabru}; but that means that I have some aardvark in mind 
(which I do not necessarily assume the speaker knows) and am asserting that 
it is a mammal. The idiomatic translation is {ro rikteropu cu mabru}; 
back-translated, this is "All aardvarks are mammals," which sounds like 
something you'd hear in a logic class. {lo'e rikteropu cu mabru} means that 
the typical aardvark is a mammal - maybe a few oddballs aren't.

{reda kanla lo'e remna} sounds not quite right - it should be {lo'e remna cu 
se kanla reda}. {reda kanla ro remna} is definitely false, even if there were 
not blind people - it means that everyone shares two eyes!

lo'e .ornitorinku na fadni mabru .ini'ibo na'o se jbena re sovda
The typical platypus is not a typical mammal because she typically lays two 
eggs.

phma