Subject: RE: [lojban] questions about DOI & cmene

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 10:46:03 -0400

At 04:45 AM 07/15/2001 +0100, And Rosta wrote:
>Lojbab:
> > >2. "la nanmu" means "ko'a poi cmene fa zo nanmu ke'a", while
> > >"coi nanmu" means "coi do [p]oi nanmu fa ke'a".
> >
> > No. coi nanmu means coi do poi du la nanmu just as coi djan means coi do
> > poi du la djan
>
>No -- what you say is in clear contradiction to the Woldy Codex, page 136
>in discussion of ex. 11.5, though I too was in error. It is clear from
>the book that "coi nanmu" = "coi le nanmu" = "coi do voi nanmu fa ke'a".

Well, I could say the book is wrong, but that wouldn't be appropriate. %^)

I'll just say that in ex. 11.5 there doesn't seem to be a substantial 
difference in meaning between his chosen expansion and mine, which would 
have use "la" instead of "le".

> > > I cannot work
> > >out from the Woldy Codex whether "doi nanmu" is in this
> > >respect like LA or like COI: does it mean "O man" -- "doi
> > >do [p]oi nanmu fa ke'a" -- or "O Man" -- "doi la nanmu"?
> >
> > It should be like coi. Grammatically COI and DOI are essentially the same
> > thing, with the differences intended for phonological restriction reasons.
>
>OK. So if somebody's name is "Nanmu", then the vocative would have to be
>"doi la nanmu" = "doi do poi cmene ke'a fa zo nanmu".

That would certainly work.

> > >3. "do poi nanmu fa ke'a" should mean "those of you that
> > >are men", but does "coi nanmu" mean "Hello, those of you
> > >that are men",
> > > "coi do poi nanmu fa ke'a", or does it
> > >mean "Hello, men", "coi do noi nanmu fa ke'a"?
> >
> > No - those of you that I am calling men.
>
>OK, but not "those of you that I am calling _Nanmu/Man_".

I'm missing the difference in the above pair.

>Your gloss "those of you that I am [describing as] men" indicates
>that "coi nanmu" expresses a nonveridical restrictive modification
>of "do". It follows that to express a veridical modification of
>"do" one would have to say:
>
> coi do poi nanmu fa ke'a
> coi do noi nanmu fa ke'a

Yes, since neither coi nor do are intended to be veridical descriptions.

>there being no briefer substitutes for these.

Maybe
coi lo nanmu

>This leaves a serious problem, which I'm utterly amazed I've
>never noticed before:
>
>+restrictive/-incidental +veridical: do poi nanmu fa ke'a
>-restrictive/+incidental +veridical: do noi nanmu fa ke'a
>+?restrictive/-?incidental -veridical: do voi nanmu fa ke'a
>-?restrictive/+?incidental -veridical: do ??? nanmu fa ke'a
>
>-- how do we make the restrictive/incidental contrast with
>nonveridical descriptions?

You may find a place in the book where all those parameters are applied to 
voi, but I think all it means is "-veridical" with no specification on the 
other parameters.

> Umm, what do you mean by "encouraged"? Most Lojbanists seem to want to
> > have something to put after mi'e at the ends of their postings etc. and it
> > has always been one of the first things a new Lojbanist TRIES to do. No
> > encouragement needed.
>
>What I mean is that someone called Sally gets called "la salis." rather
>than "la sali.". Why? Why not "la sali."?

Because "sali" is neither a cmene ending in a consonant nor a brivla, and 
therefore it is ungrammatical. Indeed sali breaks into two words, so the 
listener might take that string as "la sa li".

If you are suggesting that we could have permitted anything to be a name, 
so long as it ended in a pause, so that "la" opens it and the pause closes 
it, then you eliminate the possibility of a bare (unmarked) vocative like 
"djan.". "mi klama le zarci" would have to be interpreted as a vocative 
call to someone named "miklamalezarci".

Of course the real reason is that we never considered the possibility of 
names other than in JCB's canonical consonant-ending form, and then added 
the descriptive name as an afterthought because it offered no conflict and 
served a function useful in natlangs.

>OK, in some cases you'd have
>to have a la after coi, e.g. if Britney were "la britni" then it'd
>have to be "coi la britni" rather than "coi britni", since "coi
>britni" means "hello you who are restrictively and nonveridically
>described as whatever the fuhivla _britni_ denotes". But this seems like
>a choice Britney and her namers should make after due deliberation; the
>occasional extra "la" might seem a small price to pay to avoid mangling
>the sound of her name, by, say, perverting it into "britnis.".

That might be permissible, but the typical starting Lojbanist wanting to 
make a name for themselves (pun intended) doesn't know whether the 
Lojbanization of their birthname is a valid brivla, much less what it means.

Now my daughter's middle name is Katrina, and it was offered to her (she 
chose it from a list not knowing its Lojban sense) deliberately in 
recognition of the ability to then call her "la ka trina" which teenage 
boys certainly seem to feel is an apt name.

lojbab
--
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org