Wallops #8

["Mark E. Shoulson" <cbmvax!uunet!CTR.COLUMBIA.EDU!shoulson>]

>Date:         Thu, 2 Jul 1992 17:05:06 BST
>From: Ivan A Derzhanski <iad%COGSCI.ED.AC.UK@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU>
>>  Date:        Wed, 1 Jul 1992 17:08:50 -0400
>>  From: "Mark E. Shoulson" <shoulson@EDU.COLUMBIA.CTR>
>>  >Date:         Wed, 1 Jul 1992 12:11:54 +1000
>>  >From: nsn%MULLIAN.EE.MU.OZ.AU@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU
>>  I don't like your usage of {ko'a me mi} for "he's mine".  {me} is one of
>>  lojban's ambiguity-flags; the converted sumti could mean just about
>>  anything.  In general, I'd be *far* more likely to figure that {me mi}
>>  meant "is me" (similar to {du mi} or {mi'e}) than "is mine".

>True, although I think it would be plausible for someone to say {ko'a
>me la xrist.} for `he is a Christian', which supports {ko'a me mi}
>with the same meaning as uttered by Christ.

Well, from what I've seen of {me}, it's used *very* often to mean something
like {du}.  I recall something of Nick's which had something of the form
{da me lo broda poi brode}, in order to get a relative clause into a
selbri.  And for "he is a Christian", we have {ko'a xriso} (though that
helps us not at all when we want first-person).  I'd just be way more
likely to interpret {me mi} as "is me".  In a situation like this, maybe
even {mezo'epe mi} might be good, using the {zo'epe} metonymy construct
which I think sounds good.

>>  Maybe {cusku}'s better than {bacru}, too.

>I'm afraid {bacru lu ... li'u} means {cusku la'e lu ... li'u} - you
>utter the words to express their meaning.

Yes, I was talking about style.  What's of importance here is that the
concept was expressed (MTRANS, using that idiom) from entity to entity, not
that sounds warbled in the air.  {cusku} catches the meaning better, or
Nick's {crusku} would be good too.

>>  You seem fond of doubling brivla in tanru for emphasis, I'm not
>>  sure it's a good idea.

>I'm sure it isn't.  There are umpty-eleven ways in which the two
>halves of a tanru may be related, and things don't become any simpler
>from the head and the modifier being the same word.  You know, {catra
>catra} may be a killer of killers (say, an officer whose job is to
>execute death sentences of murderers), not a great murderer.

Yeah, the more I think about it, the less I like it, even in cases where
Colin might permit it as being "obvious".  There's too much of a slippery
slope here.  Reduplication is obvious in many languages, but remember that
in a lojban tanru, the modificand is modified by the *modifier*, not that
the modifier somehow points to what the modification should be (this is a
lousy way of getting my point across).  That is, I see in reduplication
mostly a sort of extra-grammatical point, "If the two elements of a tanru
are the same, it means augmentation," which is nowhere implied in lojban's
tanru-making.  {clira clira} means "earlyishly early", which might be
feasible as "very early" but to me just makes me wonder how something can
be "early in an early manner".  Ditto {barda barda}, {slabu slabu}, etc.
Remember, that's what we have {je'a} for in the first place.

>Ivan

~mark