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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 lojbab@hidden.email 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