From phma@oltronics.net Sat May 19 18:46:38 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: phma@ixazon.dynip.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_1_3); 20 May 2001 01:46:37 -0000 Received: (qmail 73827 invoked from network); 20 May 2001 01:46:37 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by l9.egroups.com with QMQP; 20 May 2001 01:46:37 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO neofelis.ixazon.lan) (207.15.133.11) by mta2 with SMTP; 20 May 2001 01:46:33 -0000 Received: by neofelis.ixazon.lan (Postfix, from userid 500) id EC5F73C562; Sat, 19 May 2001 21:46:27 -0400 (EDT) Reply-To: phma@oltronics.net To: Subject: Re: [lojban] djan. melbi vecnu Date: Sat, 19 May 2001 21:37:27 -0400 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.0.29.2] Content-Type: text/plain References: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: <01051921462601.01804@neofelis> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: phma@ixazon.dynip.com From: Pierre Abbat On Sat, 19 May 2001, Craig wrote: >coi > I'm relatively new to Lojban, so I'm probably doing something wrong. But I >translated "John is judged beautiful by the salesman" as "djan. melbi vecnu" >but this is also my version of "John is a beautiful-thing seller." Which is >the correct translation of "djan. melbi vecnu" and if they both are, then >isn't that an ambiguity in Lojban? I thought there weren't any of those. How >do you all interpret that sentence? "la djan. melbi vecnu" means "John is a beautiful seller" (meaning he sells beautiful things, or sells beautifully, more likely than he is beautiful and a seller, which would be "melbi je vecnu"). "la djan. melbi le vecnu" means "John is beautiful to the seller". And yes, there is ambiguity in Lojban: tanru such as "melbi vecnu" can mean any of several things, pronouns such as "ra" can have an unclear antecedent, and if a prenex doesn't have a variable in it, it may be unclear where in the bridi it's supposed to go. For instance of the last, "la niu.IORK zo'u mi klama" can mean "As to New York, I went there" or "As to New York, I came from there". phma