From lojbab@lojban.org Sun Oct 28 19:00:23 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: lojbab@lojban.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_0_1); 29 Oct 2001 03:00:23 -0000 Received: (qmail 24586 invoked from network); 29 Oct 2001 03:00:22 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by l9.egroups.com with QMQP; 29 Oct 2001 03:00:22 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO stmpy-3.cais.net) (205.252.14.73) by mta3 with SMTP; 29 Oct 2001 03:00:19 -0000 Received: from bob.lojban.org (52.dynamic.cais.com [207.226.56.52]) by stmpy-3.cais.net (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id f9T30FC91409; Sun, 28 Oct 2001 22:00:16 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <4.3.2.7.2.20011028215246.00d373f0@pop.cais.com> X-Sender: vir1036@pop.cais.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.2 Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2001 22:00:54 -0500 To: , Subject: RE: [lojban] observatives (was RE: a construal of lo'e & le'e In-Reply-To: References: <4.3.2.7.2.20011028211447.00d686c0@pop.cais.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" At 09:19 PM 10/28/01 -0500, Craig wrote: > >Not a "rule" per se, but a convention, just as the "story-time" convention > >applies to interpreting the tense of most instances of consecutive > >sentences. There are other possible uses for ellipsis x1 besides an > >observative, but that is the one most likely. Note that it is ellipsis in > >x1 that marks the observative, and not explicit zo'e in x1. Part of the > >magic of the convention is the pragmatic emphasis on the selbri caused by > >fronting it. > >How incredibly culturally biased. Why not emphasize by moving it to the >BACK, so that it is fresh in the mind as context for the next bridi? Both >ways are equally valid, why do you assume that one is just how it is to be >done? The 'pragmatic emphasis' works both ways, in my experience, so "le >gerku cu blanu"'s only flaw is its wordiness. Not culturally biased - linguistically biased. One way of emphasizing the importance of a part of a word is by moving it to either end, generally the front, if it is critical information needed now (generally the case for an observative), or the end, if it has secondary or non-immediate importance. An observative does not presume that there will be any following bridi, so it would be foolish to design around the non-universal case. Of course the bottom line is that in TLI Loglan there was an explicit debate between interpreting a bare predicate as a command or an observative ("Fire!" said to soldiers of an execution squad, vs. on seeing smoke and flame). JCB chose one way; we reversed that decision. Other ways of showing the observative were not considered, except to reject the lone sumti version, which seemed horribly flawed. lojbab -- lojbab lojbab@lojban.org 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