Subject: Re: [lojban] Bible translation style question

From: "Adam Raizen" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 20:43:15 +0200

la kreig. cusku di'e

> 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)

Other than the morphology, lojban follows English exactly in all this,
which is very idiosyncratic. So much for deciding on word order based
on this.

I've read that in VO languages, the verb tends to be maintained in the
first sentence in sentences involve gapping of a verb (i.e. "John saw
the dog and Mary the cat" instead of "John the dog and Mary saw the
cat"), and vice versa in OV languages. In lojban, 'la djan. viska le
gerku .ije la meris. le mlatu' is ungrammatical unfortunately, but
since 'la djan le gerku .ije la meris. viska le mlatu' is grammatical,
maybe that's a point in favor of it being OV. (Then again if we
replace 'je' with 'ji'a', no such grammatical limitation exists.) If
we use a termset "nu'ige la djan. le gerku nu'ugi la meris. le mlatu
cu viska" is seems more like the first verb is gapped, in addition to
forcing OV structure.

I've also read that in VO languages, in comparatives the adjective and
the pivot tend to preceed the standard, whereas in OV languages the
standard tends to preceed the pivot and the adjective. (I guess that
in 'this is redder than that', 'red' is the adjective, 'that' is the
standard, and 'than' is the pivot.) I don't think lojban has much in
the way of a pivot. Maybe it's 'fe' in a zmadu-sentence, in which case
the pivot would preceed the standard when it's used, but the rest can
be done in any order (i.e. any of 'ti xunrymau ta' or 'ti zmadu ta le
ka xunre' or 'ti ta xunrymau/zmadu le ka xunre').

mu'o mi'e .adam.