From bloke_without_a_favourite_colour@yahoo.co.uk Fri Nov 09 23:46:02 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: bloke_without_a_favourite_colour@yahoo.co.uk X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_0_1); 10 Nov 2001 07:46:03 -0000 Received: (qmail 59810 invoked from network); 10 Nov 2001 07:46:02 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.171) by m11.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 10 Nov 2001 07:46:02 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO n21.groups.yahoo.com) (216.115.96.71) by mta3.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 10 Nov 2001 07:46:02 -0000 X-eGroups-Return: bloke_without_a_favourite_colour@yahoo.co.uk Received: from [10.1.2.51] by n21.groups.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 10 Nov 2001 07:43:31 -0000 Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2001 07:45:55 -0000 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: Dumb answers to good questions Message-ID: <9silvj+isub@eGroups.com> In-Reply-To: <9obq1b+cbp9@eGroups.com> User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.82 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Length: 1172 X-Mailer: eGroups Message Poster X-Originating-IP: 62.64.191.122 From: bloke_without_a_favourite_colour@yahoo.co.uk X-Yahoo-Profile: bloke_without_a_favourite_colour --- In lojban@y..., mark@k... wrote: > You know, come to think of it, Hebrew (particularly Modern Hebrew) > has a word that's used something like this: "davka." It doesn't > translate very well. The closest I can come is "particularly." > "Why did davka Bob have to hit Fred." (why *particularly* Bob?) "Why > did Bob davka hit Fred?" (why hit and not kick), and so on. Yes, > among some folks you would in fact use it in English sentences too. > And there's the phrase "lav davka"/"not particularly" for saying > things like "The example in the book where it says "noun" is lav > davka; it could be any word." Maybe this is a little off-topic and/or not germane, but it seems to me (although I don't know modern -- or any other kind of -- Hebrew) that, based on what you wrote, 'lav davka' is better translated into English as 'abitrary'. Unfortunately, translating 'davka' as 'unarbitrary' (or, in the second example sentence you gave, 'unarbitrarily' -- 'davka' can presumably be used as an adverb as well as an adjective in Modern Hebrew) seems to me to be inaccurate, at least in your first example sentence. Sincerely, Robert