quest for opinion

[Arthur Hyun <cbmvax!uunet!acm.rpi.edu!ash>]

  I have some opinions, but in the interest of saving bandwidth,
it seemed wiser to first ask if these subjects have been gone over
while I've been off the list (about a year).  If someone's archived
any discussion, or can paraphrase such, I'd like to get a copy.
  If not, I'll be glad to try to explain my opinions in greater detail.

1) Place structures.  More specifically, is it appropriate that one
   gismu cover more than one relation because of place structures?

2) Emphasis and idiom:  There are several sets of words in the gismu
   lists I have that seem to me to express the same relation(s).  They
   appear to me to differ only by a matter of emphasis and/or idiom.
   Shouldn't there be just one gismu?

3) Translation vs transliteration:  Has anyone yet managed to produce
   a concept in lojban that is honestly very difficult or impossible
   to express in English, yet is understandable by people in a non-
   idomatic way?  Here is essential that I emphasise *concept*, not
   sentence or somesuch.  (Just because it'll probably come up, I'll
   try to handle the JL16 example at the bottom of the letter).

4) I haven't had time to really work over the BNF, but I'm wondering
   if it's true that you cannot distinguish grammatical from ungrammatical
   lojban without knowing the rafsi used?

That's that.  I thank y'all for your time and help.

cheers,
arthur



---

Now the JL16 example I was talking about:

On the bottom of p16 of JL16, there's an example of a set of
circumstances that could be transliterated as
  "X kept on: kept on hitting the dog too long, too long."

I think I'd be more likely to render the English as:
  "X punished the dog until it died."

Or iff you want greater specificity:
  "X punished the dog so often that it died."   --or--
  "X punished the dog by hitting it on so many occasions that it died."

I think that the concept can be clearly and succinctly expressed in
English when translated, but not transliterated.