Lojban In General

Posted by dbrock on Sun 24 of Aug, 2008 23:12 GMT posts: 47

Hi,

More than once I've wanted to convert a sumti referring to a selbri into
an actual selbri. For example, there's a lojbanist named {cizra} and
there's a weird lojbanist named {.LOkadin.}. How can we express this
question in Lojban?

.i la .LOkadin. what? lo cmene be lo jbopre

The name of cizra refers to a selbri, and to complete the above sentence
we need a way to convert an indirectly, _mentioned_ selbri into an
actual grammatically _used_ selbri. Now, {la'e zo cizra} refers to the
meaning of the word {cizra}, which gets us halfway, and {me} converts
the sumti into a grammatical selbri, so it would seem to take us the
rest of the way. However, {me} only creates a kind of weak identity
predicate: {srana be la'e zo cizra} or {dunli be la'e zo cizra}.
Neither of these words are adequate; we need the grammar of {me} but no
semantics other than those of {la'e}. We can get by with {ckaji tu'a}:

.i la .LOkadin. ckaji tu'a lo cmene be lo jbopre

But it would be nice if we had a more precise way to make this
conversion and retain the place structure of the selbri, so that we
could ask,

.i la .LOkadin. what? lo cmene be la cizra fi ma

In other words, what we need is a way to convert a quotation of a selbri
into an actual grammatical selbri with its full place structure.

Let's call this hypothetical word {me'ei} (mnemonic: {me} + {selbri}).
Then we could say,

.i la .LOkadin. me'ei lo jbocmene lo to po'o nai toi ka ciska tadji

When you think about this, you realize that what you have is essentially
a very easy way to create nonce fu'ivla:

.i mi citka lo me'ei zoi fy. crème brûlée .fy.

The canonical way to do this is with a so-called stage-1 fu'ivla:

.i mi citka lo me la'o fy. crème brûlée .fy.

What you can't do with a stage-1 fu'ivla, however, is import transient
verbs or other multi-argument predicates into Lojban. This is why we
have the (unofficial) convention of "stage-0" fu'ivla:

.i mi na'e -fluent la .lojban.

If you add {me'ei} to your toolbox, you can do this sort of thing
without resorting to the extra-linguistic hyphen device:

.i mi na'e me'ei zo'oi fluent la .lojban.

Does anyone think adding something like {me'ei} would be a good idea?

--
Daniel Brockman
daniel@brockman.se

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On Sat, Aug 23, 2008 at 11:27 AM, Daniel Brockman <daniel@brockman.se> wrote:
> Now, {la'e zo cizra} refers to the
> meaning of the word {cizra}, which gets us halfway, and {me} converts
> the sumti into a grammatical selbri, so it would seem to take us the
> rest of the way.

Yes.

> However, {me} only creates a kind of weak identity
> predicate: {srana be la'e zo cizra} or {dunli be la'e zo cizra}.

That's the ancient meaning of {me}, unfortunately still preserved
in the ma'oste (and thus in jbovlaste). But even by CLL time the
more useful "x1 is a referent of <sumti>" meaning was already
established. See: <http://jbotcan.org/cllc/c5/s10.html>.
(It wouldn't be a bad idea to update jbovlaste.)

For "x1 is <sumti>'s by relationship x2" I use "me <sumti> moi".

> What you can't do with a stage-1 fu'ivla, however, is import transient
> verbs or other multi-argument predicates into Lojban.

Notice though that it is grammatical to add as many sumti to a selbri
as you want, so there is no problem in importing a multi-argument
predicate with {me} and using it with more than one argument. You
just have to figure out what the "obvious" role for the argument is in
each case.

> If you add {me'ei} to your toolbox, you can do this sort of thing
> without resorting to the extra-linguistic hyphen device:
>
> .i mi na'e me'ei zo'oi fluent la .lojban.
>
> Does anyone think adding something like {me'ei} would be a good idea?

I might buy "me'ei fluent", but "me'ei zo'oi fluent" doesn't seem
like such a big improvement over "me la'e zo'oi fluent", or even
"me la'oi fluent".

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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So in essence what you're saying, xorxes, is that you think

.i mi me la'e zo'oi fluent la .lojban.

is totally fine?

--
Daniel Brockman
daniel@brockman.se

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On 8/25/08, Daniel Brockman <daniel@gointeractive.se> wrote:
> So in essence what you're saying, xorxes, is that you think
>
> .i mi me la'e zo'oi fluent la .lojban.
>
> is totally fine?

Right. (.fluent. has to be between pauses like .lojban.)

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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Posted by slobin on Mon 25 of Aug, 2008 20:27 GMT posts: 40

On 8/25/08, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:

> > .i mi me la'e zo'oi fluent la .lojban.
> > is totally fine?
> Right. (.fluent. has to be between pauses like .lojban.)

It seems like I have missed something important. What is {zo'oi}? I
understand it as an experimental cmavo, and from usage (here and
elsewhere in the list) I guess that it means "foreign ford quotation"
or something like this. But where is it described? Some discussion,
some proposal, some something? Or everybody but me knows this for
years, and I am the only ignorant person here?

--
http://slobin.pp.ru/ `When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said,
<cyril@slobin.pp.ru> `it means just what I choose it to mean'
N‹§²æìr¸›yúèšØb²X¬¶Ç§vf¢–Ú%¢6ÚžX¬¶·ª¹ë-–ˆÛjz+ƒ­†Ø^²æãyËnžË›±Êâmê+‚‹h†Ûiÿü0ÂZ#m©è®å² ¿¢¸ŸÊ‹«z·š–\¬¶ç$±éÝ™¨¥¶‹r·­j¼¥¢6ÚžŠà~ŠázZ

Posted by pdf23ds on Tue 26 of Aug, 2008 00:17 GMT posts: 143

Ack! More base 64 problems! This is what Cyril wrote:

On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 15:24, Cyril Slobin <cyril@slobin.pp.ru> wrote:
On 8/25/08, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:

> > .i mi me la'e zo'oi fluent la .lojban.
> > is totally fine?
> Right. (.fluent. has to be between pauses like .lojban.)

It seems like I have missed something important. What is {zo'oi}? I
understand it as an experimental cmavo, and from usage (here and
elsewhere in the list) I guess that it means "foreign ford quotation"
or something like this. But where is it described? Some discussion,
some proposal, some something? Or everybody but me knows this for
years, and I am the only ignorant person here?

--
http://slobin.pp.ru/ `When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said,
<cyril@slobin.pp.ru> `it means just what I choose it to mean'

To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org
with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if
you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.

On Mon, 2008-08-25 at 15:04 -0300, Jorge Llambías wrote:
> On 8/25/08, Daniel Brockman <daniel@gointeractive.se> wrote:
> > So in essence what you're saying, xorxes, is that you think
> >
> > .i mi me la'e zo'oi fluent la .lojban.
> >
> > is totally fine?
>
> Right. (.fluent. has to be between pauses like .lojban.)

In speech, yes. In writing, whitespace is more natural, since the pause
symbol is specifically Lojbanic while the quote is foreign: it can be
any string of symbols. To say {zo'oi} in written text quotes any string
of non-blank characters (including periods or any other special symbols)
is simple and useful.

Foreign quotation is inherently non-AV-isomorphic anyway so it buys us
nothing to pretend that we're dealing with AVI Lojban words.

You probably can't pronounce {zo'oi http://www.lojban.com/} without
glottal stops, so you might have to switch to {zoi} when pronouncing.

On the other hand, the same problem already exists with {zoi}, since
even though the quote mark word does not appear in the foreign written
text it may turn out to occur when pronouncing the foreign text.

--
Daniel Brockman
daniel@gointeractive.se

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with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if
you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.

> On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 15:24, Cyril Slobin <cyril@slobin.pp.ru> wrote:
>
> It seems like I have missed something important. What is {zo'oi}? I
> understand it as an experimental cmavo, and from usage (here and
> elsewhere in the list) I guess that it means "foreign ford quotation"
> or something like this. But where is it described?

It's in jbovlaste:
<http://www.lojban.org/cgi-bin/dict.pl?Form=dict.pl1&Query=zo%27oi&Strategy=*&Database=en%3C-%3Ejbo>

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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If we're going to add a shortcut for {la'e me zo'oi}, it should probably be
called {me'oi} instead of {me'ei}.

I think we need this shortcut because the stage-0 fu'ivla convention is
already established and many people seem to think that it's useful,
especially on IRC where people chat live in Lojban and sometimes need
to borrow a word quickly.

Since we're getting used to having the stage-0 fu'ivla dash available in
live chat, we better be able to prononuce it or else we'll get stuck if we
try to take the discussion to voicechat.

So {me'oi} would replace the stage-0 fu'ivla dash and audio-visual
isomorphism would be restored.

Is there any reason not to do this?

--
Daniel Brockman
daniel@brockman.se

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Posted by slobin on Thu 28 of Aug, 2008 13:44 GMT posts: 40

On 8/28/08, Daniel Brockman <daniel@gointeractive.se> wrote:

> If we're going to add a shortcut for {la'e me zo'oi}, it should
> probably be called {me'oi} instead of {me'ei}.

{me la'e zo'oi}, in that order. I believe this was a typo. But then
we may consider to complete the foreign borrowing toolkit:

{zo'oi dog} — "dog" (the word itself)
{la'oi dog} — someone called "dog"
{me'oi dog} — gerku (bridi)
{le'oi dog} — le gerku (sumti)
{lo'oi dog} — lo gerku (sumti again)

BTW, is {la'e zo'oi dog} the romoi case or the da'amoi one?

--
http://slobin.pp.ru/ `When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said,
<cyril@slobin.pp.ru> `it means just what I choose it to mean'

To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org
with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if
you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.

On 8/28/08, Daniel Brockman <daniel@gointeractive.se> wrote:
> If we're going to add a shortcut for {la'e me zo'oi}, it should probably be
> called {me'oi} instead of {me'ei}.

{me la'e zo'oi}, right?

{me'ei} could be seen as coming from ME la'E zo'oI, and it also
sort of corresponds with {me zei <any-lojban-word>}.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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> {le'oi dog} — le gerku (sumti)
> {lo'oi dog} — lo gerku (sumti again)

I think these do more harm than good, since {le me'oi dog}
and {lo me'oi dog} are quite sufficient.

> BTW, is {la'e zo'oi dog} the romoi case or the da'amoi one?

I don't understand this question.

By the way, I'm getting two copies of every message, but I can't
see that any are adressed to me directly. Anyone know why?

--
Daniel Brockman
daniel@brockman.se

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with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if
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Posted by lagejyspa on Fri 29 of Aug, 2008 15:17 GMT posts: 350

On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 10:29 AM, Daniel Brockman
<daniel@gointeractive.se> wrote:

>
> By the way, I'm getting two copies of every message, but I can't
> see that any are adressed to me directly. Anyone know why?
>
> --
> Daniel Brockman
> daniel@brockman.se

I think so. You have two addresses, daniel@brockman.se and
daniel@gointeractive.se My guess is you are probably subscribed to
this list from both of them. I noticed this because gmail.com put
your name in two different colors, unlike the usual case with multiple
messages coming from a single user.

--gejyspa

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