Hans Christian Andersen: countercomments

[Ivan A Derzhanski <cbmvax!uunet!COGSCI.ED.AC.UK!cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu!iad>]

>  Date:     Mon, 9 Mar 1992 18:43:14 +1000
>  From: nsn@AU.OZ.MU.EE.MULLIAN
>
>  In-Reply-To: Your [Colin Fine's] message of "Fri, 06 Mar 92 19:10:07 GMT."
>               <13762.9203061910@mail.bradford.ac.uk>
>
>  My experimental cmavo, given
>  lenu xy. cu broda cu galfi y'y. zy.
>  produces
>  xy. xe'e galfi y'y zy lenu xy. broda
>  which once more matches the 1990 structure.

Can you use {xe'e} with na'e {galfi}, though?  How did you decide that
{lenu xy. broda} has to become the fourth argument of {xe'e galfi}?

>  In fact, I have never quite *liked* {tu'a}, and believe that it can often
>  be omitted with no ambiguity. <...>
>
>  That having been said, I already find a phrase of the type {mi troci le
>  vorme} instead of {mi troci tu'a le vorme}=={mi troci lenu karyri'a le
>  vorme} to be irritating. Mark has taken to {tu'a} even more than I. And
>  the distinction is not always illdefined nor pointless. It's a matter of
>  extent. And I welcome this as one further opportunity for stylistic
>  divergence. (I suspect Ivan will be on your side).

I think having {tu'a} is a good idea, but being forced to use it all
the time is not.  In particular, I believe that, if one of the places
of a certain predicate is defined so that whatever argument is there
must be prefixed by {tu'a} unless it is an abstraction (NU something),
then {tu'a} should be allowed to be elided as redundant.

But this is not the case in {ri selkecmlu ri'a tu'a lo carvi}.  The
rain is as much of an event as {NU ...}, and you can be wet {ri'a lo
carvi} (no {tu'a} there), but in the case of {selkecmlu} we have an
indirect causal link.  I think the same is true in the case of the
eiderdowns, since you can have things that are not NUs and still are
direct conditions of sensing.

Note that {tu'a} doesn't solve too many problems.  What does {mi troci
tu'a le vorme} mean?  Tried to what the door?  Open it, close it,
break it, take it off its hinges?  The literal translation of {mi
troci le vorme} in Bulgarian means `I taste the door' or maybe `I test
the door' (try to use it, see whether it works properly).  In all
natural languages that I can think of, "want sthg" means `want to have
sthg' (whatever "have" may mean).  In Lojban {djica tu'a lo nolraixli}
may mean `want to strangle a m.n.m.', `want to see off a m.n.m.'...

>  >             > {ni'a} is "below"; {mo'ini'a} is "downwards".

Why's that, by the way?  The FAhA cmavo are described as "direction
modals", not "location modals".  And some of them are clearly dynamic
in meaning.

>  I remember your phrase "UI depend on the deontology of the speaker". Well,
>  I went for "kau refers to the knower of the sentence it is in". Thus
>  la djan. djuno ledu'u ri klama zo'ekau
>  means John knows where he's going, not that John's going somewhere, and I
>  know where. Right?

You mean to say that {kau} can only be used in a "knowing" sentence?
One with {djuno} as a predicate?  Come on, Nick.  This is totally absurd.

Ivan