Subject: RE: [lojban] Bible translation style question

From: And Rosta <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 14:45:15 +0000

Craig:
#> In addition, any normative style is going to
#>be strongly SAE-influenced at this stage, which is to'e lojbo.
#
#Lojban is already quite SAE. There is no way that you are going to tell me
#that it is oligosynthetic, which if I understand Whorf right is the other
#alternative. Furthermore, it distinguishes past, present, and future tenses
#(as opposed to Hopi, for example, which has past+present material things
#versus future+present immaterial things)

There are more languages in the world than SAE and Hopi!
Cross-linguistically, the semantic categories encoded by Lojban cmavo
do not, in my view, exhibit a strong SAE bias.

If I remember rightly (and I may not), oligosynthesis is when a language
possesses a very small and closed morpheme inventory, which morphemes
may be combined together to form compounds. If that is correct, then
- ironically - Lojban is probably one of the world's most oligosynthetic
languages, oligosynthesis being relatively rare, cross-linguistically.

Where I do see a SAE bias is, say, in the choice among the following:

1. lo broda cu brode
2. da broda gi'e brode
3. da ge broda gi brode

These are equivalent, but the first is the most favoured and the last the
least. Why is that? Because the languages we are familiar with tend
to prefer to subordinate into NPs (by shifting "broda" into a sumti) rather 
than coordinate or similar. And likewise, we are relatively unused to forethought connectives.

Or, similarly, while Lojban grammar makes VSO order inherently marked,
SVO and SOV orders are equally unmarked, yet there is a widespread
preference in current usage for SVO, even though SOV is (IIRC) the
most common order, cross-linguistically. Again this is because we are
all accustomed to SVO order.

I don't mean to reprove anybody; all I'm saying is that at this stage we
should prefer a great heterogeneity of styles, so as not to create a
normative style that closes down the options of future generations.

--And.