Phone game: second sentence proceedings

[cbmvax!uunet!MULLIAN.EE.MU.OZ.AU!cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu!nsn]

The second phrase to go through the phone game (and remember, participants
always welcome), was:

As Prince once said, sweetheart, (if I remember correctly) "If I was your
girlfriend, would you still tell me all those things only girlfriends talk
about".

Sylvia handled it as:

doi titselprami cu'u la .prins ju'ocu'i  xu do cusku roda poi
selcasnu no de poi na fetypendo ku'o ku'o mi noi da'i fetypendo do

(Oh sweet-beloved, (this sentence is expressed by Prince (uncertain) (was it?))
you express everything which is discussed by none other than a female friend
to me who is (suppose) a girlfiend of you.)

The {noi da'i fetypendo} is an excellent compression of the English. btw,
fetpendo is quite alright. The fault creeps in with the form of quotation
used. Does the {xu} tie with the whole sentence (as intended) or only with
the name Prince? (Actually, both make sense.) More importantly, is the {do}
of the phrase the {do} Prince spoke to, or the person I'm speaking to? I
tend to favour the latter: the {cu'u la prins.} is a tagged-on part of the
sentence, and shouldn't, I feel, alter the referent of {do}. And finally,
is {doi titselprami} included in the quote or not? I see no reason why it
shouldn't be included. The result thus comes out:

(assume I am talking to Kate, and Prince was talking to Cat)

I think Prince said this: Sweetheart, do you, Kate...

as opposed to:

I think Prince said this: "Sweetheart, do you, Cat..."

but not (*I* think; others may disagree)

I think Prince said this, sweetheart Kate: "Do you, Cat..."

This is critical. The conclusion, regrettably, is that {cu'u} is not the
safest way of quoting in a sentence, unless the whole sentence is quoted -
including {doi} (about UI I'm not sure), AND I still think {do} outside
quotes (even with a cu'u tag) stills refers to your addressee, not the
quotee's.

(Colin comments:
]I think it's deeper - though in a way simpler - than your argument.
]"cu'u la prins" is an adjunct not of the jufra, still less the selcu'u,
]but strictly of the bridi. We have  a selbri "cusku" relating several
]sumti: "do", "roda li'o" and "mi" ... AND "la prins."
]       You
]               express
]       all that ....
]       to me who ...
]       as said by Prince

]I started off writing this comment thinking that you were basically
]right, and the lojban did not work, but having written the above, I
]think it does, and is very clever indeed (once the "xu" is moved to the
]proper place). It is NOT a literal translation, but it works for me. The
]basic bridi is saying
]       Do you tell me all the things, supposing ....
]so the cu'u phrase adds
]       As prince said, I think, ....
]I think your vocative stuff is missing the point: cu'u cannot be
]asserting that anything in particular was actually said by Prince, since
](except in the construction "pecu'u" etc) there isn't anything there to
]be the quotation.

(Nick gripes that that's pretty much what he was saying :)

]I notice that the translation omits "still"    )

(Adds Mark:
]The original sentence is pretty convoluted to start with.  Might have
]worked better with {doi titselprami la prins. ju'ocu'ipei cusku lu xu do
]cusku... li'u}, that is, use lu/li'u to scope the quote.  Hence the problem
]with the {xu} getting attached to Prince.  Something is sorta strange about
]{roda poi selcasnu no de poi na fetypendo}, but something in me likes it.
]It's not literally what the original had, but I didn't misunderstand it,
]and it's elegant and logical.  I'm a little unsure about {titselprami}; I'd
]think that attaching figurative qualities such as "sweet" to a person would
]be cultural.  I mean, is your sweetheart *literally* sweet?  To the taste?
]I'd feel better with a culture-flag ({ku'u}?) or {pe'a} or {zabna} or their
]rafsi somewhere in there to clear things up.  Or even drop it entirely.
]'Course, then subsequent people wouldn't think "Sweetheart" where they did
]now, but rememeber we have the advantage of all having good colloquial
]command of English.

]Something about {cu'u}:  It's a BAI, so it attaches to the selbri, and thus
]in some sense I see it as attaching to the x1.  My translation probably
]didn't use this logic, but consider it a moment.  {mi klama cu'u la bab.}.
]This doesn't mean "Bob says, "I'm coming"".  It means "I am-a-goer
]with-expressor "bob"", so "mi" is the speaker (I guess I'm agreeing with
]you here, Nick).  I really don't know exactly what the semantics of this
]sentence would be, since "going" doesn't make too much sense with an
]"expressor" place; barely more than it would make with a "chocolate" place
](fi'o cakla).  I don't think I trust {cu'u} in this particular sentence
](the one I just said and the Prince sentence)

]Oh, and grammatically the {xu} had to attach to {la prins.}, the way things
]were written.)

Mark was in two minds between:

"Sweetheart, was it Prince who said you'd tell me everything that only
girlfriends talk about, if I were your girlfriend?"

and

"'Sweetheart,' said Prince, 'Would you tell me everything discussed by only
girlfriends if I were your girlfriend?'"

The first alternative points out the fact that the referent of {do} is still
the addressee. It is, I feel, the more natural interpretation of the Lojban
text. It has the question hanging on the identity of Prince rather than the
whole statement; again, this is what the Lojban text implies. {doi titselprami}
refers to the addressee as does {do}.

The second alternative has Mark trying to guess what was really
meant: namely, that {cu'u} was an attempt at literal quoting. Unfortunately,
you can't have the {ju'ocu'i} tying to the name Prince and the {xu} to the
main sentence; thus the "Prince, I think" is lost. Furthermore, the {doi
titselprami} is assumed to be part of what Prince is saying. Apart from that,
it's an accurate guess, but Mark felt it more honest to rely on the text
given, and chose the first alternative, which Colin translated as:

doi selprami la prins. xu du le cusku beledu'u do ba cusku fimi fero te
tavla befi da na.a lo pendyfetsi va'o mi do pendyfetsi da'i

("Beloved, was Prince the one who expressed the sentence: you will tell me
all the things talked about by X only if a girlfriend does, in the environment
of me, in the medium of you, undefined argument: girlfriend (suppose).")

The main error is the omission of {va'o *lenu*}. {da na.a lo pendyfetsi},
surprisingly to me after a half-minute's truthtable, works well; but I don't
know if it's that intuitable. I don't think the {beledu'u} "quoted" sentence
is that elegant as a whole (the nesting and reorderings seem unnecessary), but
the meaning is conveyed, though the {ba} seems to me misleading.

(Colin comments:
]As often, there's a tension between precision and elegance. "la prins xu
]cusku ledu'u" might have done, but seemed to lose the force of "Was it
]Prince who". I tend to use "fimi ferole..." to get a light sumti before
]a heavy one even when the original doesn't have that order.)

Correcting the omission: we started with:

As Prince once said, sweetheart, (if I remember correctly) "If I was your
girlfriend, would you still tell me all those things only girlfriends talk
about".

and ended up with:

Beloved, was it Prince who said that you would tell me everything talked about
by people only if they're girlfriends, supposing that I was your girlfriend?

Close-ish, but not quite.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Nick Nicholas, Melbourne Uni, Australia.  nsn@{munagin.ee|mundil.cs}.mu.oz.au
"Despite millions of dollars of research, death continues to be this nation's
number one killer"      - Henry Gibson, Kentucky Fried Movie
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