From a.rosta@dtn.ntl.com Thu Jul 06 12:15:06 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 4496 invoked from network); 6 Jul 2000 19:15:06 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m1.onelist.org with QMQP; 6 Jul 2000 19:15:06 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO relay3-gui.server.ntli.net) (194.168.4.200) by mta1 with SMTP; 6 Jul 2000 19:15:06 -0000 Received: from m714-mp1-cvx1c.gui.ntl.com ([62.252.14.202] helo=andrew) by relay3-gui.server.ntli.net with smtp (Exim 3.03 #2) id 13AGxx-0007Tu-00 for lojban@onelist.com; Thu, 06 Jul 2000 20:05:42 +0100 To: Subject: RE: [lojban] Bringing it about that Date: Thu, 6 Jul 2000 20:14:59 +0100 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 From: "And Rosta" > From: pycyn@aol.com > Sent: 13 April 2000 10:02 > > The start is to Lojban "John made me hit him," which is pretty vague in > English and Lojban lacks an equally vague form, requiring a choice among > mukti (motivate -- whatever that is going to mean exactly), rinka (cause -- > apparently taken as a physical connection -- one suggestion was that John > could only rinka it by taking my hand and hitting himself with it -- even > electrode tricks are suspect), and some others which I either forget or don't > clearly understand (necessitate?). And gasnu, agent. > The focus was on, first, getting to John, since the causal words seem to > require (quite rightly) events in both the cause and the effect places. That > meant that "John" had to be subject raised in the subject position, a > slightly odd case. And once it was entered, a deeper problem arose: if > "John" had to be raised from, say, "John's laughing made me hit him" to get > "John made me...," why doesn't "John's laughing" have to be treated as a > raising, since it is presumably something about it that worked the effect > "The fact that John's laughing was annoying made me..." And so on, ad inf. > The practical solution, that "John" needs to be flagged because it is not an > event name in a place that calls for one, seems ad hoc -- one the one hand, > John IS an event by many definitions and, on the other hand, the fact that > "John" doesn't fit should be marker enough, whereas "John's laughing" might > be more misleading. And, of course, if we want to say that what is raised > depends upon what the real motivator was, then we have to face the fact that > that might be John (not as an event even), not something he did or was, and > so the reaising might be inappropriate, even misleading. I read this as a correct argument against (overzealous, overfastidious) sumti-raising, and the followup messages from Jorge &, eventually, Lojbab appear to concur. Was that the final consensus? I ask because Lojban Central & associated pedagogues have traditionally made a big fuss about so-called sumti-raising, which struck me as bogus. I therefore wonder whether what John wd call its bogosity has now been recognized by the politburo. --And.