For And's pleasure

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

Here is the promised sample of TLI Loglan "logic".  I give first the
English that is intended to be translated.  I note of course what appears
to be an indirect question which makes it even more  relevant.

"And worst of all it was impossible to say what you meant.  The semantics
of Xlang were as slippery as a greased eel."

I now give you the Lojban equivalent for the TLI Loglan so that you don't have
 to worry about knowing what the TLI words mean; direct substitution seems
quite workable here.

. i da poi xlalymau ro de du lenu ro nu daxivo cusku daximu poi sinxa daxixa
poi termukti daxivo [kei] pu nalcumki
.i le selsinxyciste be xy pu se sakli du'i loi sligygrasygacri finpranguili

I inserted the kei to make sure the parse came out correctly, though it
probably isn't necessary.  The TLI text had a lexemic pause there.  The only
non-exact substitution is termukti - their gismu of the same "meaning" has
the x2 and x3 places reversed so the text had the equivalent of "se ter-<mukti>"

The author, the most prolific TLI writer, says of this:

JCB noted with glee after turning my original first sentence (that didn't
mean anything like what I intended soi clafo [= zo'o]) into this logical gem ...

Earlier he said that "JCB has fine-tooth-combed it into impeccable Loglan".

(oh, TLI has 5 bound variables instead of 3 so, I had to subscript numbers
4 thorugh 6 rather than just number 6 - other than that and termukti, every
thing is a word for word substitution, which shows how similar in grammar the
two language versions remain).

I will leave it to someone else to back-translate my Lojbanized text in
literal and/or colloquial form.  I left the lujvo in fully expanded form
for the benefit of those not used to lujvo making - except for termukti
the place structures do not seem to matter.

I leave it to And and Jorge  (and anyone else) to tell us how much of a
"logical gem" this is, or how impeccable it is as Loglan/Lojban by any
objective standard other than having-been-fine-tooth-combed-by-JCB
whatever that means.

Do they handle indirect questions in any interesting or useful way?
(I note BTW that I spotted instances where they use the equivalent of
lenu for "the fact that", so they seem to equate nu and du'u sometimes
while using nu for events at other times.)

lojbab
----
lojbab                                                lojbab@access.digex.net
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA                        703-385-0273
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