Re: _The Linguistics Wars_

["Jorge J. Llambias" <jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR>]

la djan cusku di'e

> I am particularly taken with the wonderful sentence:
>
>         Spiro conjectures Ex-Lax [an American brand of laxative]
>
> which looks grammatical but utterly senseless without its context,
> which is:
>
>         Does anyone know what Pat Nixon frosts her cakes with?
The Lojban equivalent:

        la spiros smadi tu'a la ekslaks

is never utterly senseless. Even without its context one naturally
would ask

        la spiros smadi le du'u la ekslaks mo

thus understanding well the first sentence. On the other hand,
the quick translation:

        la spiros smadi la ekslaks

would be utterly sensless no matter what the context.

By the way, there is a related mistake in the refgrammar, in Chapter 5:

> 9.5)    mi jimpe loi nu'a su'i nabmi
>         I understand the-mass-of is-the-sum-of problems.
>         I understand addition problems.

It should be "tu'a loi nu'a su'i nabmi". A fluent Lojban speaker should
be as baffled by the tu'a-less sentence as an English speaker is when
facing the conjectured laxative one. (You understand that addition
problems are true about what?)

Also in Chapter 5, example 6.16, "selpluka" should be just "pluka".

Jorge