From jjllambias@hotmail.com Sun Mar 03 18:51:55 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: jjllambias@hotmail.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: unknown); 4 Mar 2002 02:51:55 -0000 Received: (qmail 74296 invoked from network); 4 Mar 2002 02:51:55 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.172) by m9.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 4 Mar 2002 02:51:55 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO hotmail.com) (216.33.241.138) by mta2.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 4 Mar 2002 02:51:55 -0000 Received: from mail pickup service by hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC; Sun, 3 Mar 2002 18:51:54 -0800 Received: from 200.69.6.3 by lw8fd.law8.hotmail.msn.com with HTTP; Mon, 04 Mar 2002 02:51:54 GMT To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Bcc: Subject: Re: [lojban] Letteral, letter words and symbols. Date: Mon, 04 Mar 2002 02:51:54 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Message-ID: X-OriginalArrivalTime: 04 Mar 2002 02:51:54.0990 (UTC) FILETIME=[8B3790E0:01C1C327] From: "Jorge Llambias" X-Originating-IP: [200.69.6.3] X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=6071566 X-Yahoo-Profile: jjllambias2000 la pycyn cusku di'e >a > >So, what is the situation in Lojban? The character just above the previous >character is a letteral. The name of that character is, so it seems, a >letteral word, in this case {abu}. That's where we disagree. {abu} is not the name of the character, it is a pronoun. At least in any grammatical Lojban text. >When this character is written in some >formulaic context is is read as {abu}. Not within the grammar of Lojban, which in general does not permit to easily read out any formulas. You have to MEXify them if you want to read them using a grammatical utterance. >But this character cannot be written >in a language context, for it is almost always going to lead to an >ambiguity >-- mistaken for the word {a} which has more liberty of occurrence than the >article in English and can occur almost anywhere that abu as a character >could. That's why the character "A" is a much more convenient abbreviation for the word "abu" than the character "a". (BTW, even in "character name mode", {abu} by itself is neither "a" nor "A". It depends on whether or not the case shift has been locked to uppercase (with ga'e) or not.) >{la'e lu abu li'u cu lerfu} The referent of >{abu} is a letteral (17.10.6, said to be correct, but whether true or just >grammatical is unclear). In some context, the pronoun {abu} can refer to the letteral. But {abu} as a pronoun, not as a name. The distinction can be blurred in Lojban thanks to the abundance of pronouns that allows each letteral to have a different pronoun for itself. >So, {abu blabi} might be about a particular >occurrence of the letteral (on a neon sign, say) or it might be about >Alice, >or someone else recently referred to with an a-description. Yes. In English it would be "it's white", but Lojban gives more clues as to what "it" might refer to than English, a particular occurrence of the letteral being a strong candidate in some context. (The particular occurrence might be "a", "A", or other variants of the letteral.) mu'o mi'e xorxes _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx