Re: sumti raising reform, was Re: Chief logician?

[nsn@speech.language.unimelb.edu.au (Nick Legend Nicholas)]

Hu'tegh! nuq ja' Logical Language Group jay'?

Here starteth my valiant attempt to catch up on 1500 Lojban list messages in
10 days. I'm feeling pretty Canute-ish today :)

[on sumti-raising]
=People actually use the features provided, and with some surprisingly good
=skill.  But there are errors and non-fluencies.  Still, Nick Nicholas, who
=is the most fluent speaker of the language, uses marked raising pretty much
=as fluently as any other aspect of the language, and seems to make fewer errors
=than others.  The result is that we may not be perfect, but will have acvhieved
=a major improvement over natlangs.

I'll reiterate here what I've just emailed Jorge and Lojbab (and I'll be
tracking my way through this thread, so pardon possible out-of-date responses).
Making raising marked behaviour in Lojban is, I believe, a major difference
between Lojban and natlangs. It is far likelier to provide interesting
results for the question of where does Lojban usage diverge from natlangs,
than the first-order logical machinery of the language. In fact, I can already
tell you what happens when natlang users like us do, when confronted with
a logical 'if' (naja) in contrast to natlang non-logical 'if': we ignore it.
In my experience, you'll only see novices using naja; the more expert will
realise that ni'i conveys the meaning they want.

It's my conviction: the Lojban community is yet to fully realise how great
a cleft marked raising places between Lojban and natlangs. In particular,
agents are by no means the only roles raised out of abstractions; patients,
themes, and instruments get raised all the time, and the usual option (-gau)
does nothing for them. Consider:

The window breaks.
le canko cu porpi

The student breaks the window.
lenu le tadni cu co'e cu rinka lenu le canko cu porpi
tu'a le tadni cu rinka lenu le canko cu porpi
tu'a le tadni cu popri'a le canko
le tadni cu jaigau popri'a le canko
le tadni cu jai popri'a le canko
le tadni cu popygau le canko

The rock breaks the window.
lenu le rokci cu co'e cu rinka lenu le canko cu porpi
tu'a le rokci cu rinka lenu le canko cu porpi
tu'a le rokci cu popri'a le canko
??le rokci cu jaigau popri'a le canko
le rokci cu jaisepi'o popri'a le canko
le rokci cu jai popri'a le canko
??le rokci cu popygau le canko

Everyone uses -gau for agentive raising; jai + MODAL is a recent invention,
bare jai even more recent. I really do wonder how many Lojbanists would
come up with le rokci cujai popri'a. And yet, jai here seems to me pretty
indispensable, and needs to get a lot of attention in Lojban paedagogy.

-- 
 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @
 Nick Nicholas. Melbourne University, Aus. nsn@speech.language.unimelb.edu.au
                                    ---
"Some of the English might say that the Irish orthography is very Irish.
Personally, I have a lot of respect for a people who can create something so
grotesque."
-- Andrew Rosta <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>, <9307262008.AA95951@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk>