From cowan@ccil.org Sat Mar 02 08:12:05 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: cowan@mercury.ccil.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: unknown); 2 Mar 2002 16:12:05 -0000 Received: (qmail 35671 invoked from network); 2 Mar 2002 16:12:04 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.167) by m3.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 2 Mar 2002 16:12:04 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mercury.ccil.org) (192.190.237.100) by mta1.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 2 Mar 2002 16:12:04 -0000 Received: from cowan by mercury.ccil.org with local (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 16hC7D-0003gj-00 for ; Sat, 02 Mar 2002 11:12:07 -0500 Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: [jboske] RE: Anything but tautologies In-Reply-To: <4a.76861b1.29b23bb9@aol.com> from "pycyn@aol.com" at "Mar 2, 2002 09:29:13 am" To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Date: Sat, 2 Mar 2002 11:12:07 -0500 (EST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL66 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: X-eGroups-From: John Cowan From: John Cowan X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=212516 X-Yahoo-Profile: johnwcowan pycyn@aol.com scripsit: > And how do we tell which is which? If {vei ny le mlatu} means "n cats" why > doesn't {ny le mlatu} mean "n the cats" with "n" standing standing for some > number rather than Nelly? Because. It just doesn't, that's why. > What you have > said is that the letter en is a value and so. According to *one* interpretation of quotation marks, which I hereby disclaim. > BTW "Mind your 'p's and 'q's" > is exactly about letters: the two are easily confused in many people's > handwriting and when use to keep tally of one's drinking of a day, errors -- > mistaking quarts for pints -- can be of considerable consequence. That's one theory of the origin of the phrase. There are about a dozen others, all equally just-so stories with no evidence for them. -- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all. There are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful. --_The Hobbit_