From andrew@ling.ed.ac.uk Wed Aug 15 02:05:51 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: andrew@ling.ed.ac.uk X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_3_1); 15 Aug 2001 09:05:51 -0000 Received: (qmail 96022 invoked from network); 15 Aug 2001 09:05:50 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m8.onelist.org with QMQP; 15 Aug 2001 09:05:50 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO pisa.ling.ed.ac.uk) (129.215.204.69) by mta1 with SMTP; 15 Aug 2001 09:05:50 -0000 Received: from babel.ling.ed.ac.uk (babel.ling.ed.ac.uk [129.215.204.4]) by pisa.ling.ed.ac.uk (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA02801 for ; Wed, 15 Aug 2001 10:05:47 +0100 (BST) Received: from localhost (andrew@localhost) by babel.ling.ed.ac.uk (8.9.3+Sun/8.6.9) with SMTP id KAA16493 for ; Wed, 15 Aug 2001 10:05:47 +0100 (BST) X-Authentication-Warning: babel.ling.ed.ac.uk: andrew owned process doing -bs Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2001 10:05:47 +0100 (BST) X-Sender: andrew@babel To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: RE: [lojban] Chomskyan universals and Lojban In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII From: Andrew Smith On Wed, 15 Aug 2001, And Rosta wrote: > Jay: > > On Tue, 14 Aug 2001, And Rosta wrote: > > > > > * semantically arbitrary place structures > > > > They don't seem to be arbitrary to me (at least not the order). Seems as > > though they're all the most frequently used things which might be related > > to each other. > > What I mean is that you can't generalize about the semantics of, say, > x2s across predicates, and, in principle, you can't predict which > semantic argument is mapped to x1 and which to x2. This reminds me of a claim I heard recently regarding the concepts of `buy' and `sell'. The claim was that _all_ languages either had different lexemes for both concepts (eg acheter-vendre in French, nunua-uza in Swahili), or had `buy' as the core concept with `sell' derived from it (eg kaufen-verkaufen in German). The point being that in none is `buy' derived from `sell'. The only counter-example I could think of off the top of my head was, of course, lojban: vecnu: x1 sells x2 goods to x3 for amount x4 Does anyone know i) either any counter-examples in natural languages? ii) or why lojban is this way round? I suspect the answer to the first may explain the second, but may be wrong. Andrew Smith /~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\ | _ _ Language Evolution & Computation | | / \ _ __ __| |_ __ _____ __ Research Unit | | / _ \ | '_ \ / _` | '__/ _ \ \ /\ / / Department of Theoretical | | / ___ \| | | | (_| | | | __/\ V V / & Applied Linguistics | | /_/ \_\_| |_|\__,_|_| \___| \_/\_/ University of Edinburgh | | ____ _ _ _ EDINBURGH | | / ___| _ __ ___ (_) |_| |__ Scotland | | \___ \| '_ ` _ \| | __| '_ \ | | ___) | | | | | | | |_| | | | andrew@ling.ed.ac.uk | | |____/|_| |_| |_|_|\__|_| |_| http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~andrew | \_______________________________________________________________________/