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Xod:
> On Thu, 24 Oct 2002, And Rosta wrote:
>
> > Xod:
> > > On Thu, 24 Oct 2002, And Rosta wrote:
> > >
> > > But those 2 sentences are identical:
> > >
> > > la djan cu darxi lo nanmu ze'a le jeftu
> > > la djan cu darxi ze'a le jeftu lo nanmu
> >
> > Are they? You may be right, but it's not obvious that you are
> >
> > Certainly there is a difference between
> >
> > There is a man such that all week it has been the case
> > that John hits him
> >
> > All week it has been the case that there is a man that John hits
> > =At no time during the week has it been false that there is a man
> > that John hits
> >
> > I would have thought that
> >
> > la djan cu darxi lo nanmu ze'a le jeftu
> > la djan cu darxi ze'a le jeftu lo nanmu
> >
> > would respectively be the ways to express the two meanings. But I may
> > be wrong -- afaik, this precise point has never been discussed before
>
> I take it as axiomatic that sumti order affects nothing but stress or
> attention or focus
Surely you either don't mean that, or you realize that you are
dissenting from official Lojban.
ro le nanmu cu cinba su'o le ninmu
cinba su'o le ninmu fa ro le nanmu
-- these mean different things.
Sumti order has drastic effects on meaning. As in English, one of
the challenges of writing good Lojban is to order sumti to get
both the right truthconditional meaning and the best discoursal
sequence (of topic and focus, and of putting longer phrases later).
Our techniques for meeting this challenge are one of the things
I'm looking forward to observing in the future.
On this last point, btw, I've been thinking of proposing a
variety of poi'i that is allowed to override the left-to-right
scope rule, as a kind of reverse zo'u -- call it {zau'o} --
such that:
ro le nanmu cu cinba su'o le ninmu
= zau'o ke'a goi ko'a zo'u zau'o ko'a cinba ke'a kei
fa su'o le ninmu kei fa ro le nanmu
cinba su'o le ninmu fa ro le nanmu
= zau'o ke'a goi ko'a zo'u zau'o ke'a cinba ko'a kei
fa ro le nanmu kei fa su'o le ninmu
-- This device allows for the postponement of long or focal
phrases even when they have scope over what goes before.
--And.