Subject: Re: crdlus. critique

From: "buzzwyrd" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 05 Jan 2002 17:29:47 -0000

--- In lojban@y..., "Jorge Llambias" <jjllambias@h...> wrote:

> Also, I'm not sure the use of {du} there is quite right. The
> computer should know that {ro da du da}. The question it should
> ask is not {ma du le se go'i} but rather {le ki'a se go'i}.

I was led astray by the "textual confusion" gloss, which I construed 
as indicating channel noise. And glosser3 returns it as <Huh?>.
But the referance grammar agrees with you.

> "Which?" is difficult in Lojban.
I noticed that.

> 
> > Person: WHAT IS THE PYRAMID SUPPORTED BY?
> > la prenu: .i le jipkubli se sarji ma
> >
> >Strictly a grammatical issue: {.i le jipkubli cu se sarji ma}
Or {le jipkubli ku se sarji ma}.

> 
> Why not just {i ma sarji le jipkubli}? Or, if keeping English
> word order is important, {i ma le jipkubli cu sarji}?

I had made it my policy for this particular exercise, that of all 
the possible renderings I could come up with, to choose the one that 
most closely resembles the original structure, within acceptable 
limits. It might be worthwhile to distinguish general malglico 
inherent in a speaker, from malglico that is bleed-thru of the 
translated text.

> 
> > Person: STACK UP TWO PYRAMIDS.
> > la prenu: .i ko poidregau lei re jipkubli
> >
> >{lei} isn't necessary - the person doesn't care which ones, and the
> >computer doesn't care whether they should be considered a mass.
> 
> Hmm... (it should be {poirdregau} or else it means {poi dregau})...

It certainly does break up that way. But it got by glosser3.

> But {ko poirdregau re jipkubli} means that for exactly two pyramids,
> you should stack each of them. You do want to do something to them
> together as a mass, not to each of them separately. However, {lei}
> doesn't work because the speaker doesn't have two particular 
pyramids
> in mind. So maybe {lu'o re jipkubli}.

I'll buy that. The refgram doesn't spend much time on the likes of 
lu'o, so I was a little skittish about employing it. (But then I 
charged headlong into using nu'i, didn't I? A closer reading of the 
refgram makes my error obvious.)

> 
> > Computer: WHILE I WAS STACKING UP THE RED CUBE, A LARGE RED 
BLOCK AND A
> > LARGE GREEN CUBE.
> > la skami: .i ca lenu mi poidregau nu'i le xunre kurkubli lo 
barda xunre
> > bo bliku lo barda crino bo kurkubli
> 
> I'm not sure what the place structure of poirdregau is supposed
> to be, but here {le xunre kurkubli}, {lo barda xunre bo bliku}
> and {lo barda crino bo kurkubli} are each in a different place,
> and it is not clear what the {nu'i} is for.

The place structure of poirdregau is a truly marvelous edifice of 
insight and erudition, which this message space is unfortunately too 
small to explicate.

.i zo'o .ije ki'e

mu'o mi'e djek