Subject: RE: [lojban] Why is there so much irregularity in cmavo/gismu?

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 21:37:51 -0500

At 08:38 PM 11/13/01 -0500, Craig wrote:
>An explanation of why xu and .ui are different grammatically.
>
>Consider a hypothetical person - we'll call him Jimbob, a good generic
>lojbanist name - who comes to me to ask about lojban. First he asks how to
>say "I go." I tell him you say "mi klama," not wanting to get into SE and FA
>yet. But, lover of attitudinals that I am, I mention that you show your
>feelings with a word that you can put anywhere in the sentence. For
>instance, "I go :-)" is "mi klama .ui" He asks how to make commands. I tell
>him you use a different form of the word for 'you'. He asks how to ask
>yes/no questions. I say you stick 'xu' anywhere in the sentence.
>So Jimbob goes off and reads the Codex Woldemar. He then asks why I didn't
>tell him that the emotions and questions were the same. I explain to him
>that in English, we say 'ick' to express displeasure, and we rephrase the
>sentence to ask a question.

But we don't always, at least in the spoken language. "You went?" is 
grammatical English, and corresponds exactly to "do [pu] klama ?xu".

>"In Lojban," I say, "the two can occupy the same grammatical space.

Not only "can". They DO.

>But 'How do I ask a question' and 'how do I express
>displeasure' are still very different questions, linguistically.

That is NOT true. That is malglico, or at least malropno. The proper 
Lojbanic phrasing is "How do I express/indicate 
displeasure/obligation/interest/agreement[all attitudinals so far] 
/contrast/parallelism[discursives]/supposition[evidential]/interrogation[xu]?"
All of them are expressions or indications that are independent of and 
metalinguistic with respect to the predication that is the basis for the 
Lojban sentence.

If someone tries to ask the questions as if they were unrelated, the proper 
answer is that Lojban communicates a variety of different messages as 
independent meta-indications from the core sentence.

> It doesn't
>matter that the answer is the same, because it doesn't have to be. That in
>Lojban it is, makes no difference as to what the questions ask."

The assumption that the questions are different is a false one.

> And then, Jimbob achieves enlightenment.

But if enlightenment is sought, then you should not be misleading him in 
the first explanation by implying that they are different things.

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