Re: Dvorak (& Lojban)

[Chris Bogart <cbogart@QUETZAL.COM>]

On Sat, 4 Oct 1997, JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS wrote:

> cu'u la kris
> >I think this apparent paradox isn't because clani is subjective, but
> >because le'e dargu le'e rirxe cu frica leni te clani ka'u.
>
> Why {ni} there? I would say:
>
>         le'e dargu le'e rirxe cu frica le ka ke'a clani fi makau
>         Roads and rivers differ in respect to what they are long.

Yes, that's better.  I'm out of practice.  But I would think that using ni
instead of ka would emphasize that you're talking about a quantitative
difference between the lenths of two reference measuring-sticks, rather than
just the fact that the two sticks are not identical.

> I agree, yes. But what te clani do we use to say that some river is
> kilto some road in length?

Could be meters, or the length of time required to navigate it, or something
else that should be clear in context.  Or I suppose you could even use
different te clani when making pseudo-mathematical comparison between
abstractions: "he's twice as stupid as the world is round".  The thing being
compared here (some assumed equivalence relation between IQ and variability
of curvature) is even more absurd than using inverse meters as a measure of
shortness, but both can be imagined.

 > And why should it matter whether the > river or the road are long or short
if we are just comparing their > objective lengths?

Longness and objective length are not so unrelated in my mind.  One is a
quality and one is a measure, but I guess I think of "ni" and "ka" as ways of
converting between the two.  "ni clani fi le mitre" ought to be about the
same as "mitre", and "ka ke'a zu'i zmadu le mitre" should be similar to
"clani" (although I think I'm messing up levels of abstraction and place
structures...) I agree then when speaking of objective lengths it would be
more straightforward to use mitre than some construction involving clani.

co'o mi'e kris