Re: Lojban's imperfections?

[Julian Pardoe LADS LDN X1428 <pardoej@LONNDS.ML.COM>]

On Thu Dec 12 Christian Richard <cprchrd@MAILSERV.MTA.CA> wrote:
> 6.  To learn Lojban, I would have to master the order, number, and
> semantics of arguments associated with each predicate.  I have noticed
> that this dependency on order is also very much like the usual order in
> English.  Are there again reasons why this order is not culturally neutral
> and wasn't originally determined randomly instead of matching the natural
> order the arguments would have in English?  Or is this a direct import
> from the predicate calculus?

Long ago, when I first read about Loglan, I thought of writing a spoof
article "The Place System of Esperanto", explaining how Esperanto has
a place system like that of Logban (Lojlan?) but with certain clever
enhancements, such as handy little mnemonic markers.  Thus in
   li instruas al la infanoj pri historio
'al' and 'pri' are mnemonic place markers which (a) remind the
listener of the role of the arguments and (b) relieve both speaker
and listener of the task of remembering the order of arguments, other
than the first (which has a special zero marker).

What a neat and clever idea these markers are, hey!

I was then going to talk about the fact there is alternative,
shirter form of marker that can be used to mark one of the 'secondary'
arguments.  Using this we could replace 'al' or 'pri' by the
alternative marker:
    li instruas la infanojn pri historio
    li instruas historion al la infanoj

I was also thinking of mentioning the place-converter "-igh-"
that brings the secondary argument to the first place.
   X amas lin  ->  li amighas

-- jP --

PS: You understand that "as", "o" etc. are Esperanto shmavoj and
are written together with other words only by convention.  What we
really have is:
    li instru as la infan o j n pri histori o
(This is geting like a spoof of some of the more way-out approaches
to the grammar of Eo!)