Subject: RE: [lojban] Auxlang sentences and lujvo

From: "And Rosta" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2001 23:03:01 -0000

Lojbab:
> >1. The big house was full of books.
> 
> Actually, on thinking about the many replies that have been posted, this 
> sentence is more problematic than it appears. Compare with:
> 
> "The big cup was full of water".
> le barda kabri pu culno loi djacu
> 
> It seems unlikely that the English "is full of" when referring to books 
> means that same as "is full of" when referring to water. Rather, we would 
> tend to use the phrase merely to mean that the house contains an 
> extraordinarily large quantity of books.

The quantity is large relative to the size of the house. 

Fullness can be relative to the physical capacity of the container or
to the functional capactity of the container.

> It was interesting that every single Auxlang translation of the sentence 
> mimicked the English idiomatic usage. 

I don't agree that it's idiomatic, but most Lojban translations from
English are rather slavish. Which is not necessarily a bad thing,
because natlangs embody a lot of Good Sense.

--And.