From iad@MATH.BAS.BG Fri Dec 01 09:29:35 2000 Return-Path: X-Sender: iad@math.bas.bg X-Apparently-To: lojban@egroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-6_3_1_2); 1 Dec 2000 17:29:35 -0000 Received: (qmail 18262 invoked from network); 1 Dec 2000 17:29:31 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by l10.egroups.com with QMQP; 1 Dec 2000 17:29:31 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO lnd.internet-bg.net) (212.124.64.2) by mta1 with SMTP; 1 Dec 2000 17:29:30 -0000 Received: from math.bas.bg (ppp102.internet-bg.net [212.124.66.102]) by lnd.internet-bg.net (8.9.3/8.9.0) with ESMTP id TAA13470 for ; Fri, 1 Dec 2000 19:31:32 +0200 Message-ID: <3A27DF96.F5D288A@math.bas.bg> Date: Fri, 01 Dec 2000 19:27:50 +0200 X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.74 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: zoi gy. Good Morning! .gy. References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit From: Ivan A Derzhanski The division commander unexpectedly stepped into the barracks. A trembling orderly sprang to attention, and in a thin voice said: `Good morning, sir.' The division commander eyed the private for an age-long second. And then he commented confidentially: `When I pass you in future I want a salute, not an inaccurate weather report!' ---------- John Cowan wrote: > On Fri, 1 Dec 2000, Ivan A Derzhanski wrote: > > The concepts `young' and `old' are in fact scalar opposites. > > What scale are `curse' and `bless' on? > > Something like "x1 directs divine attention to x2, intended to have > effect of degree N" where N varies from "highly positive effect" > (blessing) to "highly negative effect" (curse). I see. The odd thing is that the unmarked member of the pair should be at the negative end of the opposition. In a natural language it would be the positive end that would be unmarked. > > Unlike Gandalf (and unlike Pycyn, it seems), I fail to see > > how `good morning' can be thought of as anything other than > > a mere formality. When was the last time you decided not > > to say `good morning' to someone because [...] you thought > > a good morning was not something you wanted to wish him? > > The last time I passed a personal enemy. Aha. So your `good morning' would be more accurately translated as {coi.io} or {coi.iu}, or something like that. When you want to show an attitude to your interlocutor in Lojban, you use an attitudinal, not an inaccurate weather report (or a wish that takes a waggonload of language-specific convention if it is to be meaningful at all). Btw, in Hungarian the greeting often has the form _jó reggelt kívánok_ `I wish a good morning', and even if _kívánok_ `I wish' is omitted, _reggelt_ `morning' is still accusative. Contrariwise, in Russian _dobroe utro_ can't be a wish, because then the case of the phrase would have to be genitive, and it is actually nominative/accusative, so the whole is a statement of fact if anything. How they go about translating Gandalf's discourse into those languages I don't know. > > There is a perfectly good Lojban expression to use in all those > > situations in which English speakers say `good morning', namely > > {coi}. What do you need another one for? > > Well, Bilbo's final use of "Good morning!", which is perfectly > idiomatic BTW, means more like "co'o". Oh, yes. But translating that in the same way as the {coi} one would be even more malglico than translating `good morning' already is. Many languages have calqued the Western time-of-day greetings, but considerably fewer use them as partings also. --Ivan