Subject: [lojban] Re: What the heck is this crap?

From: "And Rosta" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2002 23:33:58 -0000

Robin CA:
> This message is about a thread on jboske. Here's a particularily
> pointful message:
> 
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jboske/message/712
> 
> Ignoring the incredibly rude tone of And's reply, the *content* is
> frightening 

(I had to go look it up to find out which message it could have
been that contained some incredible rudeness. I suppose there
must be cultural differences among us that determine perceptions
of rudeness, because I don't find myself rude, but do find some
of the young North Americans rude.)

> To wit: it is the opinion of the old-time experts that
> 
> ca ro djedi lo nanmu cu cinba la meris
> lo nanmu ca ro djedi cu cinba la meris
> 
> are distinct in meaning 
> 
> More frighteningly, this implies that:
> 
> ca le nu broda kei lo nanmu cu cinba la meris
> lo nanmu ca le nu broda kei cu cinba la meris
> 
> are distinct in meaning 

Potentially, but there is an actual difference only if you are
referring to more than one nu broda:

"During each event of brodaing, there is a man who kisses Mary"
"There is a man who, during each event of brodaing, kisses Mary"

If you're referring to just the one event of brodaing, these
come out meaning the same thing.

> And pretty much everyone on jboske seems to agree with it. I don't
> normally read jboske, myself; xod pointed this out to me 
> 
> This drastically changes the semantics of lojban as I understand them 
> As I engage in real-time conversations in the language, albeit with word
> lookup, I feel that I understand the basic semantics pretty well 
> 
> Given all that, one of the following things is true:
> 
> 1. The above are not, in fact, distinct in meaning 
> 
> 2. xod and I are missing something in the Red Book (note in particular
> 10.23, which directly contradicts the above) 
> 
> 3. An erratta to the Red book is required 
> 
> Which is it?

None of them. The Red Book is acknowledged by all to be incomplete,
even by standards of what was established prior to its publication.
Furthermore, the book is largely expository and is as much pedagogical
as it is definitive. It is written for a readership of people who
don't know Lojban at all, not for people who do know it and are 
looking for full and precise documentation of its rules. It is a
masterly book, but only a reference grammar, not a rigorously
consistent documentation of all that is known about Lojban
semantics.

--And.