Re: CONLANG: picking tomatoes

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

Actually mark, that tomato-picking problem would have been a good "beginner
exercise" on Lojban List.  You are correct that the solution needs to
involve an attitudinal in order to be even moderately succint.  "intend"
normally is far more ad hoc then "plan".  I might go for plan-want
(platydjica) for most usages.  But .ai works much better.

So i would express your intent as
ai mi ba crepu leva tamca

which is conveniently short compared to the English.  Now I'll quote your
post from the conlang list now that everyone has tried to back trnaslate my
effort without looking at it (Right?! %^)

Your summary does seem to be a good summary of how certain Lojbanists seem
like they might go about translating it.  HUmor is appreciated!

lojbab

On conlang Mak Vines posted a humorous posting including the following
about Lojban:
>Q.  How do you say, "I intend to pick those tomatoes," in Lojban?
>
>A.  Lojban is free from syntactic ambiguity, so we should have no trouble
>translating, unless your example sets some kind of semantic trap.  Let's
>see.  Intend is {purpla}, which requires an abstractor of selma'o NU in
>the x3 place.  Now, some Lojbanists might prefer to describe tomato
>picking as an activity or event.  Others might describe it as a process,
>an experience or even a state.  Most would not describe tomato picking as
>a property, at least not as a human property, altho a mechanical tomato
>picker could be said to have a tomato picking property, which humans
>might be said to share.  Hmm.  This _is_ a semantic trap.  No matter
>which NU abstractor we use, someone on the list will disagree.  Maybe
>we'd better express intent with an attitudinal, make a tanru for tomato
>picking & leave it at that.