From nicholas@uci.edu Fri Aug 03 02:14:02 2001
Return-Path: <nicholas@uci.edu>
X-Sender: nicholas@uci.edu
X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com
Received: (EGP: mail-7_2_0); 3 Aug 2001 09:14:01 -0000
Received: (qmail 25051 invoked from network); 3 Aug 2001 09:14:01 -0000
Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by l10.egroups.com with QMQP; 3 Aug 2001 09:14:01 -0000
Received: from unknown (HELO e4e.oac.uci.edu) (128.200.222.10) by mta3 with SMTP; 3 Aug 2001 09:14:01 -0000
Received: from localhost (nicholas@localhost) by e4e.oac.uci.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id CAA05931; Fri, 3 Aug 2001 02:14:01 -0700 (PDT)
X-Authentication-Warning: e4e.oac.uci.edu: nicholas owned process doing -bs
Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2001 02:14:01 -0700 (PDT)
X-Sender: <nicholas@e4e.oac.uci.edu>
To: <lojban@yahoogroups.com>
Cc: Nick NICHOLAS <nicholas@uci.edu>
Subject: Well I guess you do learn something new every day...
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.30.0108030208060.13175-100000@e4e.oac.uci.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
From: Nick NICHOLAS <nicholas@uci.edu>


Kudos to Adam Raisen, apologies to Robin Turner, reasonably polite and
understanding beratements to John Cowan, thanks to Iain Alexander,
wild-eyed incomprehension to Bob LeChevalier, and arched eyebrows to the
rest of you for what I've just discovered, as a result of Adam's comments
to my lessons:

http://balance.wiw.org/~jkominek/lojban/9708/msg00070.html

Robin was right about {vo'a}, it turns out, and I was wrong. {vo'a}, in
referring to the main bridi rather than the local bridi, does not behave
like most reflexives in the world (which is why I thought we didn't do
it.) There are clear reasons you would want vo'a to do so in Lojban,
though, given that anaphora is more difficult the longer you go, and {ri}
will do just as well as {vo'a} for a local bridi referent, but {ra} is
unmanageable for a main bridi referent out of an abstraction. And
Norwegian and Icelandic, amongst others, do have long-distance reflexives
like this.

Not mentioned in the Ref Grammar at all (in fact, it implies the
opposite), but a 1997 email from Lojbab is enough to confirm to me that
the mystical gloss of {vo'a} in the cmavo list still holds.

And they ask why we need a dictionary...

-- 
== == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == ==
Nick Nicholas, Breathing {le'o ko na rivbi fi'inai palci je tolvri danlu}
nicholas@uci.edu -- Miguel Cervantes tr. Jorge LLambias


