Subject: Re: [lojban] typos???

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 2000 14:29:59 -0400

At 06:06 PM 08/26/2000 +0000, Alfred W. Tueting (Tüting) wrote:
>Studying the "Red Book", every now and then I'm stumbling over pieces
>of text that don't go together with my (still fragile!)
>knowledge of Lojban, so I do not know whether I didn't really grasp
>the issue discussed there (sometimes maybe due to the
>ambiguity of the Master's language ;) - like with the /zi'o/
>"problem"*) or there has occurred a misleading typo:
>
>On page 160:
>10.1) mi catlu lo mlatu poi (zo'e) zbasu ke'a lei slasi (the brackets
>are *square* brackets)
>If this were right (with the /zo'e/ infact elidable!), it translates
>"I look at the cat that makes (made) itself from plastic"(!) So my
>guess is that the brackets should be removed, right?

Remember that zo'e is filled with some value that is obvious from context 
OR not important enough to specify. In this case, because "ke'a" refers to 
"lo mlatu" and is just as short as "zo'e", the fact that "zo'e" is not used 
means that zo'e probably does NOT refer to the cat, but rather to some 
unspecified/unimportant x1 of zbasu.

Thus the better translation is "I look at the cat which (someone) made it 
from plastic" or more idiomatically "I look at the cat (which is) made of 
plastic". The zo'e is not grammatically required - like other bridi, the 
assumption when the place before zbasu in the relative clause is omitted is 
that it has the value of zo'e. Now the Book also probably says that the 
normal value for that "zo'e" in x1 (whether elided or not) can be assumed 
to be "ke'a", but it should also say that if "ke'a" is used elsewhere in 
the relative clause, then this assumption does not necessarily remain true 
(and in fact is probably false). Not having the Book in hand, I cannot 
check to see if this is the case.

lojbab

--
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org