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on 2/4/04 9:07 PM, HandyDad at lsulky@hidden.email wrote: > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Yahoo! Groups SpamGuard has detected that the attached message to the > group ceqli is likely to be spam. For more information > about SpamGuard, please visit our help pages: > http://groups.yahoo.com/local/spamguard.html > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > > From: "HandyDad" <lsulky@hidden.email> > Date: Wednesday, February 4, 2004 9:07 PM > To: ceqli@yahoogroups.com > Subject: [ceqli] Re: definite & indefinite articles > > --- In ceqli@yahoogroups.com, Rex May - Baloo <rmay@m...> wrote: >> How useful does everybody think the Loglan words are? I started > out with >> the notion that to should be equivalent to loglan le, ti to la, and > te >> simply a noun marker. We could designate ta as = to lo, and let te > also >> serve to mark the indefinite. > > There's something vaguely unaesthetic about the mass description > particle "lo", but J.C. Browne thought it was important to have so > who am I to argue? I do think that noun phrases have to be marked > somehow, so "te" can serve as the indefinite or simply be the default > marker when nothing else seems to apply. I also still like > Garrett's "da", the "indefinite to you but definite to me" article, > because it's complicated to convey the idea without such an article > and the construct is so frequent. > > "to" ~ 'definite' > "ti" ~ 'named' > "te" ~ 'indefinite' > "ta" ~ 'mass' > "tu" ~ 'indefinite/definite' (is "tu" already taken?) > > I have a feeling that more article differentiation than this will be > hard for people to learn. Maybe just because it's hard for me. > > It just occurred to me, "ta" might work well for abstract stuff. It > would seem weird to say '"to" honesty is the best policy', but "te" > wouldn't be right either. 'The general concept of honesty...', 'Mr. > Honesty...' is what we're talking about, and "ta" seems to fit that. > This all sounds very good to me. My only doubt is about 'tu,' and only because I can't quite figure out how often it would be called for. Reading more of the old Loglan stuff, I can see how things might develop. With combinations, I mean. To say "I saw a man" Go pa xaw hansi jino. or Go pa xaw han ta jino. or just Go pa xaw ta jino Go pa xaw te jino Go pa xaw jino. With subtle differences that might develop in interpretation. -- Rex F. May (Baloo) Daily cartoon at: http://www.cnsnews.com/cartoon/baloo.asp Buy my book at: http://www.kiva.net/~jonabook/book-GesundheitDummy.htm