From phma@oltronics.net Sun Jul 08 03:45:35 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: phma@ixazon.dynip.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_2_0); 8 Jul 2001 10:45:34 -0000 Received: (qmail 61470 invoked from network); 8 Jul 2001 10:45:34 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by l7.egroups.com with QMQP; 8 Jul 2001 10:45:34 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO neofelis.ixazon.lan) (216.189.29.65) by mta1 with SMTP; 8 Jul 2001 10:45:32 -0000 Received: by neofelis.ixazon.lan (Postfix, from userid 500) id 15EAE3C566; Sun, 8 Jul 2001 06:45:12 -0400 (EDT) Reply-To: phma@oltronics.net To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] optional punctuation Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 06:29:57 -0400 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.0.29.2] Content-Type: text/plain References: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: <0107080645110Q.01737@neofelis> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: phma@ixazon.dynip.com From: Pierre Abbat On Sun, 08 Jul 2001, Nick Nicholas wrote: >You will have noticed that the Lojban-language preface of the lessons uses >optional punctuation, including ! and ; . I myself think optional >punctuation is a good and wondrous thing, because I find slabs of lowercase >Lojban with no punctuation and capitalisation indigestible. (I am very much >aware that punctuation and capitalisation are Western-only conventions; >then again, so is learning to read Latin script.) I too find it hard to digest, but the punctuation as used in the preface is strange. I see no reason to put a punctuation mark (other than a denpa bu) at the beginning of a word, unless the word is closing a quotation, and "!la'a" makes no sense to me. It makes me think that there's supposed to be a click there, like Khoisan. If I were writing Lojban with punctuation, I'd put the question mark at the end of the clause, and similarly the exclamation mark. Quotation marks I would use like this: .i le seltcidu po'u la'e lu" la lojban. mo? "li'u la'o gy" Robin Turner "gy I would use commas about as in English, though maybe not in lists because Lojban requires the "and" to be repeated, and if I were dropping the periods at the ends of names I'd make sure not to drop the period before a comma, otherwise someone could run the name together with the following word. phma