Re: [Ladekwa] Re: jawjeaca - Latejami messages

2) Translating is inherently not a static activity, but dynamic. Saying that you are translating something into something else presupposes that you are changing the symbols in a message, which is a dynamic relationship, again by definition. This means that in order to suppose a static concept, you must be saying that the message is already in the language of the audience.

3) This therefore means that as a minimum, the message must mean, "Keeping yourself communicating in the vernacular". This again is not translation by definition, because you don't even need to know a foreign language in the first place in order to do that. But even if I accept this definition of "jawjeaca", it suggests a problem elsewhere. How do you consistently convert the two case roles into the one case role when you change the case structure of the verb from A/P to AP? When you say "jawjeacamba", you know that the Agent is the translator and the Patient is the message to be translated. Why, then, when you revert the verb to "jawjeaca", does the Patient collapse into the Agent so that you still end up talking about the translator? Why doesn't the Agent collapse into the Patient so that you end up talking about the thing to be translated? Don't say that it's because the former definition is the most useful, because that will not be true in every case, which it needs to be in order that the production rules of the interlingua be absolutely regular.

Now, we already know that the one case that is absolutely common to every verb is the Patient. The Patient case is therefore the very heart of any verb, because that is what is being affected by the verb. When the verb for translation is dynamic, it is the Patient that is being translated by the translator into the translated message. If a dynamic verb turns P into F, then a static verb must logically have P in the state of F already. It seems only logical, then, that when the verb is static, the Patient case must then be pertaining to the message itself again, which is now in the language of the vernacular to begin with. Because the Patient case is the one indispensable case to the verb, it would seem very strange if that case were not then dominant over the agent case. Consequently, when the verb combines Agent and Patient cases, it would seem consistent that the Agent case should collapse into the Patient case and not the other way around. Hence, the AP verb for "translation" will be about the message to be translated rather than about the translator. Combine these two ideas, and you can only conclude that "jawjeaca" means "to keep oneself in the language of the audience." So I must stand by my original definition of "jawjeaca".

On 18/11/05, lojbaner <MorphemeAddict@hidden.email> wrote:

--- In Ladekwa@yahoogroups.com, Geoff Hacker <geoff.hacker@g ...> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>  The Ladekwa-English dictionary currently has jawjeaca as an AP-s
verb. How
> can something actually translate itself, as this default value
implies--and,
> even more strangely, how can it be a static, rather than a dynamic
verb??
>  I'm concerned that the default case structure doesn't seem
particularly
> useful.
>  Geoff
>
As I understand it, AP-s doesn't have a true reflexive meaning, but
instead means that A is keeping himself (P) doing the action.
So in "Jawjeaca se", the person didn't translate himself, but instead,
kept himself in the activity of translating.

stevo

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