From arosta@uclan.ac.uk Mon Jan 28 06:45:59 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: arosta@uclan.ac.uk X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_1_3); 28 Jan 2002 14:45:58 -0000 Received: (qmail 11037 invoked from network); 28 Jan 2002 14:45:58 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.167) by m3.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 28 Jan 2002 14:45:58 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO com1.uclan.ac.uk) (193.61.255.3) by mta1.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 28 Jan 2002 14:45:58 -0000 Received: from gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk by com1.uclan.ac.uk with SMTP (Mailer); Mon, 28 Jan 2002 14:19:57 +0000 Received: from DI1-Message_Server by gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk with Novell_GroupWise; Mon, 28 Jan 2002 14:45:39 +0000 Message-Id: X-Mailer: Novell GroupWise 5.5.2 Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 14:45:15 +0000 To: lojban Subject: RE: [lojban] Bible translation style question Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline From: And Rosta X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=810630 X-Yahoo-Profile: andjamin 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 tense= s #(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= =20 than coordinate or similar. And likewise, we are relatively unused to foret= hought 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.