[lojban-beginners] Re: (no subject)

[melissa@fastanimals.com]

On Fri, 27 Feb 2004 jkominek@miranda.org wrote:

> 'Sense' isn't an applicable concept at the syntactic level.

Sure it is.  It's possible to violate syntactic sense in natural 
languages.

In keeping with the violence theme, for instance, "I die you" doesn't make
syntactic sense because "die" doesn't take a direct object.

These syntactically senseless sentences are possible in English and 
Spanish, and I seem to recall that they're possible in Swahili as well 
(although my Swahili is quite rusty).  I suspect that they are possible in 
any natural language.

Getting rid of such was one of the original goals for Loglan, according to 
some docs on the Loglan web site.  I guess I just sort of assumed that 
Lojban had inherited that, since they are quite similar grammatically.

> Someone could say, for instance, "I'm going to kill you, because
> you're black." You and I consider that an entirely irrational
> statement, but if a hardcore KKK member hears it, it'll be as rational
> to him as the statement "Its raining, you should carry an umbrella" is
> to us.

In that case it is the semantics adding the irrationality.

"I'm going to kill you, because you're dangerous" is essentially the same 
syntax, but would seem more reasonable to most people.  The syntax isn't 
the problem with your example; it's more of an irrational *idea* than an 
irrational statement in the literal sense.

-- 
mylisys XOLynswyrt
mi tadni la lojban