Re: Simple Lojban questions

[Ivan A Derzhanski <iad@MATH.ACAD.BG>]

Chris Bogart wrote:
> On Wed, 24 Sep 1997, JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS replied to this question:
> > >Allowing the selbri to be the last word in a
> > >bridi forces a listener to retain a potentially long string a sumti in
> > >short term memory until the selbri is finally heard, at which point the
> > >listener must mentally fit together all of the sumti just heard, placing
> > >a large burden on the listener for all but very short bridi.
> >
> > It would certainly be bad manners on the part of the speaker. When
> > the first arguments are short, on the other hand, they can be put first
> > without any problem.
>
> I hope it isn't bad manners, because I like to try to do this occasionally
> in my writing.  I think it's a good exercise for writer and reader (or
> speaker and listener) to make an effort to explore the parts of Lojban
> that are most unlike their native languages.

Or unlike anyone's native language.  How many languages on this planet
distinguish up to five arguments by their relative position?  Read on.

> Anyway, as PC pointed out, lots of languages (like Japanese) get by just
> fine with subject-object-verb word order.  Lojban is just a switch-hitter.

It is not that simple.  Does not one of J Greenberg's famous universals
(a statistical one) say that verb-final languages nearly always have a
case system?  In Japanese you do wait for the verb, but at least the NPs
you store are all marked for case, and while the relation of syntactic
marking to semantic function is not a trivial one, one can hardly deny
that it exists.  In Lojban all you know about each of the pre-selbri
sumti (excluding any BAI-marked ones, but including any FA-marked ones)
is the number of the slot it occupies.  Will you suggest that it is the
same thing to store in one's short-term memory a NP/sumti as a dative
or instrumental argument of a Japanese verb (which provides at least
some clue regarding its semantic function) or as the x3 or x4 of a
Lojban selbri (which seems to do no such thing)?  I don't know, but
I very much doubt it.  In any case, it is not obvious to me that Lojban
(in its selbri-final style) is comparable to a SOV language such as Japanese.

--
`Meum est propositum in taberna mori;    Vinum sit appositum sitienti ori:
 Ut dicant cum venerint angelorum chori "Deus sit propitius isti potatori".'
                          (Archpoet of Cologne, `The Confession of Golias')
Ivan A Derzhanski                              <iad@banmatpc.math.acad.bg>
H: cplx Iztok bl 91, 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria  <http://www.math.acad.bg/~iad/>
W: Dept for Math Lx, Inst for Maths & CompSci, Bulg Acad of Sciences