Re: some outstanding issues

[Nick Legend Nicholas <nsn@SPEECH.LANGUAGE.UNIMELB.EDU.AU>]

Hu'tegh! nuq ja' Jorge Llambias jay'?

Since Lojbab has thrust a vote upon me (a vote I don't think I deserve, but
hey, enough 'mea culpa' :-) , here's my opinion on these:

=1- {re'u} as the ordinal ROI.

I don't think it'll hurt (unlike the lambda, possibly. The problem with lambda
is that, if you're going to build it into the language, you should build it
in at the gut level, so it permeates everything; it hasn't been built in, and
I doubt it can readily float on top of ke'a. The questions John raised in
proposing lambda haven't gone away, though, and I'll have to go back to them.)

=2- A rafsi for {jai}.  Since all SE have rafsi, and {jai} is very much
=   like a SE, I think it could use one too. jaz seems to be available.

No question of it. Emphatic yes, and I'm surprised it hasn't already been done.

=3- Was {xruti} deagentized? The concensus seemed to be in favour, but
=   I'm not sure if it was done.

Oh. My lujvo files are off-line, but it seem to recall it was...

Now for my news. The good news is that my thesis is going well --- the question
of what happens when grammaticalisation crashes into diglossia is quite
fertile. The bad news is that my thesis is going well --- which means my
backlog of Lojban mail extends back to May. Whether I'll make any headway
with it any time soon remains to be seen, but I am in Sydney Jan. and Feb.,
working for Microsoft (in Common Lisp), so maybe that'll be the time to.

As happens quite frequently to me, everything I read in linguistics reminds
me of Lojban. This distinction made in Greek has taken my fancy:

(1)     Thelo   ghiatro pu      ine     apo tin Athina
        I want  doctor  that    is      from At.
        I want [a] doctor [any doctor] from Athens

(2)     Thelo   ena     ghiatro pu ine apo tin Athina
        I want  one     doctor  that    is      from At.
        I want a doctor [a specific doctor] from Athens

(3)     Thelo   ena     ghiatro pu      na              ine apo tin Athina
        I want  one     doctor  that    IRREALIS        is      from At.
        I want a doctor [any doctor] from Athens

This ties in to the specific/definite business that has been being discussed
here; the doctor in (1) and (3) is nonspecific; in (2), he is specific but
indefinite; in (3), the relative clause becomes "which should be from
Athens". Indeed, I've ended up saying in my draft that you can't make in
Greek realis claims about nonspecific entities --- so god knows what I do
about (1). (Well, I know what I do in *my* idiolect: I slide a _na_ in :-) ).
On top of all that, of course, the semantics forces the relative clause
from restrictive to non-restrictive and back again.

So how would you say all this in Lojban again? (I'd know, only I haven't
been keeping up :-( ).

(Incidentally, my thesis is on that word _pu_ --- which, believe me, does
a lot more than relativisation.)

--
 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @
 Nick Nicholas. Melbourne University, Aus. nsn@speech.language.unimelb.edu.au
                                    ---
"Some of the English might say that the Irish orthography is very Irish.
Personally, I have a lot of respect for a people who can create something so
grotesque."
-- Andrew Rosta <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>, <9307262008.AA95951@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk>