Subject: RE: [lojban] Bible translation style question

From: "Craig" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2002 20:52:18 -0500

>I use SOV whenever it would be as clear as the SVO (there are times when it
>wouldn't, but they are not all that frequent)

>Interesting, I was aware of it as a regular pattern in use only from people
with Romance language backgrounds (you don't have one, do you?) where it is
a
>norm with pronouns at least.

I do speak Spanish, but I do it in Lojban because it felt more lobykai to do
so at first, and I have gotten used to that style.

><I have been reading about 'implicational universals' among
>languages, and Lojban is similar to both SVO and SOV languages in other
>aspects, but slightly closer to SVO.>

>Interesting. Details, please. Moght this say something about what is
natural Lojban style? (Assuming we don't want to do something just because
no other
>language does.)

to summarize the sporadic but relevant bits of Anthony Fox's _Linguistic
Reconstruction: an Introduction to Theory and Method_: SVO languages are
more likely to be prepositional; SOV tend to be postpositional. OV tend to
be agglutinative, with (C)CV syllable structure, vowel harmony, and pitch
accent, while VO tend to be inflecting. OV languages have adjectives before
nouns, VO have them after. Verb-final languages will have a case system.
This gives us the following for the two styles:

Pro-SVO: prepositional (1)
Anti-SVO: isolating, adjectives before nouns. (2)
Pro-SOV: CCV syllables, adjectives before nouns. (2)
Anti-SOV: prepositional, isolating, no pitch accent, no vowel harmony, no
cases. (5)

In other words, lojban doesn't really fit either mold. but it has some of
both. however, since 1/2 is slightly larger than 2/5, I conclude that it is
closer to an SVO language - but not by much.

--la kreig.daniyl.

'segu le balvi temci gi mi'o renvi lo purci
.i ga le fonxa janbe gi du mi'
-la djimis.BYFet

xy.sy. gubmau ckiku nacycme: 0x5C3A1E74