From robin@BILKENT.EDU.TR Wed May 30 07:59:39 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: robin@bilkent.edu.tr X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_1_3); 30 May 2001 14:59:39 -0000 Received: (qmail 95348 invoked from network); 30 May 2001 14:59:29 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by l7.egroups.com with QMQP; 30 May 2001 14:59:29 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO manyas.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr) (139.179.30.24) by mta2 with SMTP; 30 May 2001 14:59:27 -0000 Received: from neo.fen.bilkent.edu.tr (neo.fen.bilkent.edu.tr [139.179.97.69]) by manyas.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr (Postfix) with SMTP id 7C6FC125C0 for ; Wed, 30 May 2001 17:06:06 +0300 (EEST) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Organization: Bilkent University To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Request for grammar clarifications Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 18:00:36 +0300 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.2] References: <3B13AD35.8080204@reutershealth.com> In-Reply-To: <3B13AD35.8080204@reutershealth.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: <0105301800360B.06088@neo.fen.bilkent.edu.tr> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit From: Robin Turner On Tuesday 29 May 2001 17:07, John Cowan wrote: > Nick Nicholas wrote: > > Is {lo ninmu du la djiotis.} an erroneous statement? Not stylistically > > undesirable, but demonstrably illogical or false? > > No, certainly not, given that "la djiotis. ninmu" holds. It means > that there is some woman who is identical with (= the same object > as) Djiotis. Incidentally, is there any difference between {lo ninmu du la djiotis.} and {lo ninmu du la'e lu djiotis. li'u} ? > > > Is the fact that du is > > intended to render as equal *names* of a thing, rather than just > > descriptions, sufficient to do so? > > Not at all. Indeed, using "du" between names is a rather marginal > use, as in "Cicero is Tully". The more reasonable uses are things > like "Fred is the man who mows the lawn" and "The man I saw at the > beach is the spy who was arrested last week" (Take that, Ortcutt!), > where we relate a name to an in-mind description. Using a veridical > description instead is certainly both grammatical and reasonable, > as in "ro cevni du la .alax." = "Every god is identical with Allah". But does this really capture the sense of "la ilahi il'allah" (which I assume it is a translation of)? robin.tr