Re: sumti grammar oddity

At 04:41 PM 9/11/03 -0700, Jorge "Llambías" wrote:
> > But a corresponding *intended* usage might be "lo
> > so'eboi pa tarci joi so'u plini" (the many planetary systems).
>
>Yes, that one does make some sense. (Except perhaps for {so'e}. If
>so'e really is unrelated to "most" it should loose that keyword once
>and for all.

Well, if the byfy ever gets around to doing its job, rather than 
redesigning the language, we can consider it. Choosing clearer words to 
define the status quo language is reasonable. (This is my brief answer to 
And's byfy question re conservatives, BTW - I'm simply not that interested 
in considering much less discussing what I'm willing to change in the 
language design until I see some sign that the byfy is working to define 
the bulk of the language according to the status quo.)

(piso'e can be "most of" which is where the "most" came from; keywords were 
intended to be memory hooks and not definitional.) Relative numbers work 
as cardinals in outer quantifiers - they indicate an indefinite number 
relatively large or small compared to the inner quantifier. As inner 
quantifiers, we don't have good keywords for indefinite cardinals because 
they are relative to some arbitrary standard.

Maybe "myriad" would be a good key word for the internal so'e. It conveys 
a larger number than "many". But "so'e le paki'o broda" then doesn't work, 
because the translation is different in an outer quantifier with a definite 
inner quantifier.

> > (The real answer is that we tried to make the grammar as unrestricted as
> > possible, while still being able to resolve the structure unambigously per
> > YACC.
>
>Not always, though. {ka'enai} is an example where you didn't follow
>that rule.

Actually we might have considered it and it did not work originally. The 
tense grammar changed under Cowan's watch, and freed up some things that 
may have been necessarily restricted before.

lojbab

-- 
lojbab [email protected]
Bob LeChevalier, Founder, The Logical Language Group
(Opinions are my own; I do not speak for the organization.)
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org