From rob@twcny.rr.com Sun May 27 17:32:06 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: rob@twcny.rr.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_1_3); 28 May 2001 00:32:05 -0000 Received: (qmail 90447 invoked from network); 28 May 2001 00:32:03 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by l8.egroups.com with QMQP; 28 May 2001 00:32:03 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mailout1-1.nyroc.rr.com) (24.92.226.146) by mta3 with SMTP; 28 May 2001 00:32:03 -0000 Received: from mail1.twcny.rr.com (mail1-1 [24.92.226.139]) by mailout1-1.nyroc.rr.com (8.11.2/RoadRunner 1.03) with ESMTP id f4S0UP028506 for ; Sun, 27 May 2001 20:30:25 -0400 (EDT) Received: from riff ([24.95.175.101]) by mail1.twcny.rr.com (Post.Office MTA v3.5.3 release 223 ID# 0-59787U250000L250000S0V35) with ESMTP id com for ; Sun, 27 May 2001 20:30:24 -0400 Received: from rob by riff with local (Exim 3.22 #1 (Debian)) id 154AuI-0002Hq-00 for ; Sun, 27 May 2001 20:29:14 -0400 Date: Sun, 27 May 2001 20:29:13 -0400 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Request for grammar clarifications Message-ID: <20010527202913.A8693@twcny.rr.com> Reply-To: rob@twcny.rr.com References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.17i In-Reply-To: ; from pycyn@aol.com on Sun, May 27, 2001 at 06:31:35PM -0400 X-Is-It-Not-Nifty: www.sluggy.com From: Rob Speer On Sun, May 27, 2001 at 06:31:35PM -0400, pycyn@aol.com wrote: > A different question is whether {me} has the power to change a name > (only brand names?) into their common noun sense, so that {me la ford} > means "is a Ford" instead of "is the one named Ford". Unlike the > way that {me la djan} means "is the one named John" and not "is > a John".> > > Thank you for reminding us why changing the meaning of {me} was such a > mistake, leaving us without a natural way of doing this and forcing us to > make up some apparently ad hoc fix. (What was gained or avoided by the > change? Does anyone remember? Was it -- as was occasionally the case -- > just incompetence of somebody in the inner circle or was there a real > reason?) Of the possible ad hoc fixes, the one using {me} in its original > sense seems to me at least as reasonable as any alternative proposed (come to > that, has an alternative been proposed?) "Ford" (indeed, {ford}) is clearly > a proper name and some weird English habit of using "the" or "a" in front of > some proper names and not others (not all the cases are brand names, by the > way) should not affect the situation in Lojban. Would {me lai ford} be > better? I think that part of the reason {me} was changed is because {du} is, for some reason, taboo. I know it's not good to throw {du} around carelessly, but sometimes it would be the best way to say something. But with {du}'s status in the language now, it would get more use as a lerfu shift or yet another word for "ten" or something - out of fear of being unlojbanic, nobody uses {du}. So, it seems that {me} was changed to incorporate some uses of {du}. An example that comes to mind is way back from aulun's poem, {morji loi critu}. The poem ended with, IIRC, le morsi mlatu me mi Now I realize that {me} was probably chosen for the alliteration, but let's forget that it was poetry for a minute. It seems that aulun wanted to say "the dead cat is me", but with {me} it just means "the dead cat pertains to me" - a weaker sentence. If {du} had been used, it would make a powerful (though very unlikely to be literally true) claim. This is different from {mi morsi mlatu}, which would seem to be the most Lojbanically correct way of saying that you are a dead cat, because the sentence referred to a dead cat mentioned earlier in the poem. Perhaps a better example would be the Walt Kelly quote, "We have met the enemy, and he is us." Is there any better way to translate that than {mi'o puzi penmi le bradi .ije ri du mi'o}? -- Rob Speer