Re: unusual style - response to And

[ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>]

> >   [fi la pou lojbab ralju]
> >   [fe lei jai fau skicu
> >       [be fo lo jbovla]
> >       [bei fe maa]
> >       [bei fai ro da poi kea me maa]
> >       [bei fi da]]
> >   [fa diu]
> >tinbe
> >
> >   [Sophy]
> >described
> >   [the purchase
> >       [of flowers]
> >       [from us]
> >       [for everyone in her class]
> >       [last year]]
> >   [to us]
> >
> >Now is that so tough?
> That is not even in the same category.  You used the abnormal-to-Lojban
> predicate final

I agree that predicate final is unusual in Lojban usage, and that
therefore its unfamiliarity may cause difficulty to inexperienced
readers. I was asking whether the difficulty extended beyond this.

> - or more exactly - you mixed heavy and light grammatical structures
> in such a way as to make it less than obviosu what their boundaries were.

You'll need to explain to me more clearly what you have in mind here.

> And you rearranged the terms for no apparent reason except to be
> obfuscatory.

I did no *rearranging*. I did only *arranging*. There are no rules
concerning reasons for possible arrangements.

>   [to us]
>   [the purchase
>       [for everyone in her class]
>       [last year]
>       [of flowers]
>       [from us]
>   [Sophy]
> described
> And even this doesn't capture the use of di'u, fai, ke'a.

That English is pretty iffy because it's pretty bad to extract ("move")
two things at once ("to" and "the purchase"). Change "to us" to
"apparently" and it becomes better. But anyway, for topicalization
(fronting of "the purchase") there may be rules in English pertaining
to it - it remains unclear whether or not its topicalizing function falls
out from purely pragmatic considerations.

As for your objections to {diu} and {kea}?! What can I say? Go and
ask a competent literate fluent lojban speaker whether these are difficult.
The answer will be No.

> English into Lojban of similar structure.
>   [Sophy]                                 la sophis
> described                               skicu
>   [the purchase                           lenu tervecnu
>       [of flowers]                          loi xrula
>       [from us]                             mi'o
>       [for everyone in her class]           seva'u ro cmima br levo'a tadnygri
>       [last year]]                          ca le prulamnanca kei
>   [to us]                                 mi'o
> And the result takes the same number of "words" depending on how you
> count them, and is MUCH easier to understand.

The comparison is misleading, because the rules governing position of
verb/selbri are very different in the two languages. As for similarity
of structure, closer would be:

   [Sophy]                                 la sof
 described                               skicu
   [the purchase                           le nunvecnu
        [of flowers]                          be loi xrula
        [from us]                             bei mi'o
        [for everyone in her class]           bei seva'u ro cmima be
                                                     levo'a tadnygri
                                                     beo
        [last year]]                          bei ca le prulamnanca beo
   [to us]                                 mi'o

> >I am trying to test what the language can do, rather than restrict
> >myself to a pidginized user-friendly subset of the language.
> Poets do that, and poetry of that sort is usually equally obfuscatory
> and difficult to understand.  I can't understand Michael Helsem's
> English poetry much better than his Lojban, though I can at least
> recognize it as grammatical with some difficulty.

No no. Poetry is difficult not solely because of its syntax. If the
intended meaning were clear the syntax would be little obstacle.

Current Lojban usage has a style like you'd expect of a children's
book - as simple as possible. Naturally most present users value
easy communication more highly than anything else, but I was
attempting to dip my toe into the expressive powers of less well
visited areas of grammar.

> >> I agree with Goran. Fi-fa-fu-Lojban is very obfuscating, especially in
> >> combination with jaifau-Lojban.
> >Is there a clear reason for that, apart from its unfamiliarity?
> Is there a clear reason why English written other than SVO order is
> obfuscatory?

I presume you mean OSV. It's usually not confusing, but when it is
it is usually because of (a) gardenpathing and reading the O as the
S, and (b) ambiguities about where the O has been extracted from.

> Why do style guides tell people to avoid unnecessary use of the
> passive voice?

I don't know. I suppose they have to tell people something, and its
safest to tell them the same things everyone else is telling them.

Your questions imply that fi-fa-fu is analogous to OSV in English
and to passive. It isn't. At least not syntactically. Perhaps your
comparison is justified in that in English OSV and passive are each
less common than their SVO / active counterpart, so they are less
ordinary. That doesn't make them difficult though.

> And when is it NOT considered obfuscatory to say something in more
> words than necessary (which Fi-fa-fu-Lojban does, unless motivated
> by some kind of term weight or focus consideration).

It is usually not obfuscatory to say something in more words than
necessary. It is commonly asserted that is is obfuscatory to say
something in more words than necessary, but the commonness of this
assertion is attributable to widespread ignorance about language
rather than to its essential truth.

In (1) the presence of "some" does not increase difficulty, while
in (2-3) the presence of "that" reduces difficulty.

(1) I found (some) coins down the back of the seat.
(2) I doubt (that) it will.
(3) I met the man (that) she had been telling us about.

---
And