Re: 'Observative' - terminology

[Iain Alexander <I.Alexander.bra0125@OASIS.ICL.CO.UK>]

Colin replies to Lojbab on one of the uses of the (syntactic) observative:
-------------------------
> > - it is one of a few sentences where I have picked up net.lojban.usage,
 though
> > I think it malglico.  The most obvious of these is "cumki fa ..." for
> > "it is possible that ...".  I'm not sure why people including myself seem to
 fe
> > feel comfortable with such reversal, especiallly since we do it only with
> > certain words that do so in English  - in general I feel very UN-comfortable
> > when using a form that is recognizably patterned after an Englishj usage,
 but
> > where I can't say why I am doing it in a non-typical Lojban manner.  It is
> > perhaps possible that what we want is to make the Lojban word "selcumki"
> > simply so we can comfortably use the Engl;ish usage as an observative, even
> > though selcumki may not have a legit English translation.
--------------------------

> This form is more generally motivated than a few English words, though it is
> certainly not universal in the world's languages. Chomsky described a
> transformation called something like Heavy Clause Shift, whereby a single
> long and complex clause is moved to the end of a sentence.  As far as I
> know he was mainly thinking of English, but you certainly get parallel
> structures in other Western European languages, at least.

I think I'm basically in agreement with Colin here,
although no doubt with a slightly different slant.

It's back to the general stylistic point about putting the long
bits last.  I first remember coming across it in a computer
programming context, but my instincts are that it's generally
applicable to all sorts of communication-related situations,
at least as a rule of thumb.

> Some people have used "se cumki" rather than "cumki fa" . I (and others)
> have preferred the latter. Why?

> I think it is for this reason:
>         se cumki lenu dai
> means
>         zo'e se cumki lenu dai
> i.e. there is a fronted (hence emphasised) x2, even though it is then
> omitted. This suggests a true observative: "Lo conditions [hold] under
> which ...."

> But
>         cumki falenu dai
> means
>         cumki falenu dai kei [fe] zo'e
> i.e. the x2 is not fronted. So while it is still there, it is not emphasised.

> This distinction is real for me, and explains my preference. I am not sure
> whether it is a legitimate interpretation or not.

Another reason is that sometimes there's only an x1,
which makes SE-conversion unsatisfactory. %~}

fatci falenu mi remna




Of course there are other occasions where something completely different
is going on:

    fuzme lenu krati mi lenu te vecnu ro skami cabra keikei fa la djan.
    The one responsible for buying all our computer equipment is John.

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leka ka'e srera cu se ckaji ro remna             mi'e .i,n.