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Re: lemi mela .AIsopos



coi doi nik. .i .a'o ko lifri le ca'o selgleki nanca

> 2. It was precisely the fact that the original had a participle rather than
> an adjective that led me to use a relative clause. (The original has
> Alwph3 limwttousa - A fox hungering - lorxu co xagji, syntactically). It
> can be countersaid that there is no way "hungry" could not be expressed in
> Greek other than in a participle.

This is really interesting, as it shows how we are approaching the same
linguistic structures differently, looking to reproduce different
characteristics of them in our 'style-preserving' translation. To you, a
participle is a verbal construction, something that is derived from a
clause, and thus different from an epithet - so you translate it with a
clause rather than a tanru modifier. To me, a participle is an epithet,
and is different from the corresponding clause in being more tightly
bound to the modificatum, so if trying to reproduce the shape of the
original I would use a tanru (inverted with 'co' as you suggest, if the
original language was NA).
 I guess my ideas here are partly tinged with Japanese, which is not
only AN and SOV, but expresses a relative clause by an embedded
verb-final clause preceding the noun, so that there is no distinction
between a relative clause and a (clause governed by a) participle
>
> >             I wonder about your use of the gadri "le", "lo" and
> >             "lei".
>
> You are probably quite right about my use of articles; I haven't quite
> taken to them yet.

The further I get into playing around with Lojban, the less I think I
understand the different gadri. When I made the above comment, I was
somewhat infected with the ideas of the *loglan* articles 'le' and 'lo'
(which roughly correspond to 'le' and 'lei', but sometimes to 'le' and
'lo'). I am having doubts about the rule of thumb that 'le' is 'the' and
'lo' is 'a'. Both are specific (the particular one or ones I'm talking
about) whether that specificity is external or just in the speaker's
mind - the difference is whether the selbri is being used as a
convenient description, or actually (incidentally) asserted to be true
of the thing thereby described.
It seems to me that you can quite happily tell a story about a particular
crab and its mother using either 'le' or 'lo' throughout, with a
difference of flavour as to the objective reality of the participants in
the story (ta'o su'oda po'u ba'e lo canldrdanlrkankre ku'o ka'e bacru xu
su'ode). But changing in mid-stream is strange. "The particular thing(s)
which is/are crab(s) say(s) to the particular thing(s) which I am
referring to as mother(s)".

>
> You're right on {lei manti}; in {loi vanyjba}, I was trying to say that the
> grapes themselves were considered as a mass (a bunch).

That seems to me confusion about 'mass'. If I have it right, 'loi'
doesn't mean 'a mass of' but '(a part of) the mass of' - i.e.
non-specificity. If he is hungry for grapes, 'loi vanyjba' is
appropriate, but these were particular grapes.

>
> >             "lego'i" - strictly, this means "the individual(s)
> >             described as satisfying the previous bridi", so for
> >             example in "Fox and grapes" it doesn't mean "the fox" but
> >             "the wanter to get them and not able to get". In general
> >             these will be extensionally the same, but I'm a little
> >             dubious about this as a general technique.
>
> Well, I realised that, and I did get away with it on this one. A codification
> of argument replication, which is what Jimc attempts, runs quickly into
> shoals; but I don't find my usage here exceptionable.

And since reading your terfanva I've met it elsewhere. I'm still unhappy
with it though - as long as it's used thoughtfully, it's OK, but some
time somebody's going to run into trouble with intension vs extension
(eg when the xyxipa of di'e is quantified). I think we want an anaphor
for just that. How about di'exivo'a? Somebody's going to tell me it's
ungrammatical. vo'apodi'e? di'exipa?

>
> >             "vimcu vo'a"?  "subtracted himself from ..."? I think
> >             this is a poor choice of brivla.
>
> Well yes, but I was following orders :) - in this case, the analogous usage
> of {xruti} for "to return ["oneself"] to a place".

"xruti" is defined, as I remember, as moving something, rather than
giving back. "vimcu" is remove/subtract - which suggest to me that its
meaning is to do with causing a lack rather than with movement - I may
be wrong, but if so, I don't think 'subtract' belongs in the definition.

>
> >             I wonder about your alternation of "naka'e cpacu" and
> >             "na'eka'e xagri'a" - I can make sense of both, and I'm
> >             not yet used to negation, so there may be a good reason
> >             for the difference that I'm missing.
>
> Possible, but I doubt it. My rule of thumb is that, in {na'e}, the sumti
> are still related to eachother, and with {na}, they aren't necessarily.
> I not-get the grapes; I not-improve my situation. The distinction I've
> made is probably not really there; in any case, what I really wanted to
> say, by analogy, and couldn't, by restrictive grammar, is {ka'enai}.

Now I've got the cmavo list, I'm not happy about ka'e for that anyway.
Isn't it  nu'o - or am I reading 'innately' too restrictively?

> >             Crow and fox:
> >             I think you missed out an abstractor "noi ba'o kavbu lo
> >             rectu"
>
> I don't see what's wrong with this. Could you elucidate?

My mistake. I didn't have a cmavo list, and was only guessing what
"ba'o" meant.


ni'oco'omi'e kolin. fain.