(From Lognet 94/1. Used with the permission of The Loglan Institute, Inc..)
The following anecdote was originally told us in Loglan by James Jennings. As it was a veritable plum-pudding of logic problems, Dr. McIvor, JJ, and I tussled over it long and bravely before getting our lodtua, Randall Holmes, to come and referee our discussion. With his help, we've contrived some new logical usages to express its innocent-seeming observations with what we hope is precision and economy. As usual, we'll present the Loglan text first without comment. Then, in the translation, which will be found on a separate page, we'll explain the various logical usages we've adopted. But a word first about the tense-system used here. It was one originally proposed by John Parks-Clifford, the editor of The Loglanist, in a special supplementary issue of that journal which was issued in November 1980 (TL4/3:21-27). That system is roughly as follows. Once a composition has been established as a narrative--which is done by using pa as early as possible in it--the narrative present remains in force to the end of the story, and all departures from it are elastic, i.e., they snap back to the narrative present when released. The only exceptions to this rule are remarks which are discursively labled--for example, with zou (by the way)--as not part of the narrative. Such remarks can have their own tense labels, as one does in the second paragraph of this anecdote where the present perfect napa is used in a sentence headed by Zou. Because this paragraph is not actually part of the narrative, its tense operator can and does refer back to the time of composition.Ne Rorlensia
Coi la Djeimz Djeninz
Na lepo mi pa hijra lo terkea guo, mi madzo ne sanbruci je li, Ae lo pucka ga kinci tu, lu. I, na lepa ckemo, le sinma ji nu namci liegei, Star Wars, gei ga mutce rornurfundi.Zou, liu puckai, napa siftoa liu pucka, ja pa mela Nevesefon, purda.
Mi respli levi sanbruci vi le sensi fikco rizgru. I la Maik, ji fremi je mi, ganble lemi sanbruci, e kendiu le jursaa je sei. I Mai ze mi dislu lo nu balci lengu giazu.
Na le fucdei, mi godzi le terkea komta ci rizgru kruma. I, vi kei, ba tokri barta, e fu srite lemi nu sanbruci. Isui, le tokri barta ga fu srite ro notlenfoa je seo. I mi kacycea lepo ri, nei nursrisu, ikou su, nei nu kotlensri, iceci su, nei nu lensri le nersornumsio, iceci su, nei nu lensri le danse mrenu tojo smisrisio pe la Crrlak Holmz. Ibuo ro, nei nu lensri lo natra lengu. I leu natra lengu ga nu setpai lau lo junga, lo arba, lo polka, ro notbi. I ri le rizgrudjo pa kendiu su nei ri le terkea ge lengu galpai.
La Maik, pa mi hijra. I na lepo vizka mi guo, Mai cutse li, Tu tsedaspa ti! lu.
Translation with Notes
Ne Rorlensia
(A Many-Language-Place (A Bedlam))
Coi la Djeimz Djeninz(According to (by) James Jennings)
- Na lepo mi pa hijra lo terkea guo, mi madzo ne sanbruci je li, Ae lo pucka ga kinci tu, lu.
When I was attending university I made a button (sign-brooch, a pinned button with a sign on it) saying (quote) Ae lo pucka ga kinci tu (unquote).
The first pa in this story, the one in the lepo-clause, establishes narration. It would of course be a mistake to say that the button slogan was Let the Force be with you! because it wasn't; the whole point of the story is that it was done in Loglan. So in translating, we must be careful not to translate the bits inside the quotation marks.
- I, na lepa ckemo, le sinma ji nu namci liegei, Star Wars, gei ga mutce rornurfundi.
(And) At that time, the cinema named Star Wars was very popular (by-many-liked).
Note that this film was named Star Wars and not Lo Tarci Po Dorja...although James does insist, soi crano, that it was called precisely that in Loglandia. (The film was apparently very widely distributed, soi crano, but this is probably not where James first saw it.)
- Zou, liu puckai, napa siftoa liu pucka, ja mela Nevesefon, purda
(New paragraph) By the way, the word 'puckai' has taken the place (place-taken) of the word 'pucka', a 1974 word.
Zou puts this paragraph completely outside the narrative, and thus allows it to have its own tense vector, napa, which is to be measured from the point of speech or composition. Note that the narrator is introducing new paragraphs not with Nao, the formal paragraphing operator, but simply by the absence of an I-word, a convention first used in this column by JJ in LN 93/4.
- Mi respli levi sanbruci vi le sensi fikco rizgru.
(New paragraph) I wore (clothing-used) this button at the science fiction club (private-group).
Narration has been resumed; the simple past is now elastically understood.
- I la Maik, ji fremi je mi, ganble lemi sanbruci, e kendiu le jursaa je sei.
(And) Mike, a friend of mine, admired (high-looked-at) my button, and asked about (question-discussed) the meaning of s (my button) (specifically, about the behavior s was intended to evoke).
Here we have the first anaphora, the replacement by sei of the last-occurring description whose principal preda commenced with s, which happens to be lemi sanbruci. Note that jursaa means behavioral meaning; nursaa would have meant referential meaning, workable but perhaps not quite so appropriate here. Again, Loglan makes distinctions that our English-trained minds are perhaps not quite ready to use.
- I Mai ze mi dislu lo nu balci lengu giazu.
(And) Mike and I discussed constructed languages at length.
Giazu would become piazu if it were lifted from the context of narration.
- Na le fucdei, mi godzi le terkea komta ci rizgru kruma.
(New paragraph) (On) The next day, I went to the college computer-club room.
- I, vi kei, ba tokri barta, e fu srite lemi nu sanbruci.
(And) In k (the room) something was a chalkboard and written on with the text of my button.
- Isui, le tokri barta ga fu srite ro notlenfoa je seo.
(And) Moreover, the chalkboard was written-on-with many translations (other-language-forms) of sigma (my button text).
Sei is still assigned to lemi sanbruci; so seo (sigma) must be replacing the most recent description that also has an s-initial principal predicate, and that is lemi nu sanbruci, my button text. We have decided to draw a firm distinction between two English words we will standardly use in these commentaries. One is the word multiple, which we will use for the object we designate with any plural description, whether definite or indefinite and in either English or Loglan (The ten men, Le neni mrenu; Many people, Ro pernu); the other is the word set, which we will use only for the designata of the set-descriptions we make with lea or leu in Loglan but indistinctly in English (He is one of the men, Da bie leu mrenu; Humans are a subset of mammals, Lea humni ga parsei lea mamla). Using this distinction, we can now say that, with ro notlenfoa je seo in this sentence, we have indefinitely but distributively designated a multiple composed of many translations, each of which, we say, is written on the chalkboard. In the next sentence we will replace this designation with nei (from the n of notlenfoa) and designate a submultiple of it with ri, nei--the comma will be necessary; see below--again distributively.
- I mi kacycea lepo ri, nei nursrisu, ikou su, nei nu kotlensri, iceci su, nei nu lensri le nersornumsio, iceci su, nei nu lensri le danse mrenu tojo smisrisio pe la Crrlak Holmz.
(And) I became aware (conscious-became) that some few of the n (several of the many translations) were unserious, because at least one of the n was computer-language-written, and (close-bound to last clause) at least one n was written in the hexadecimal number system, and (close-bound) at least one n was written in the dancing man, so to speak, code (secret writing system) of Sherlock Holmes.
There are a number of new things going on in this sentence. With ri, nei (at the moment this comma is necessary to prevent this phrase from being heard as rinei, a dimensioned-number) the narrator is saying that each of some several of the many translations he found on this chalkboard were unserious--or at least believed by him to be unserious--a state of affairs of which he says he became aware. He then treats his awareness as an effect to which he attributes three causes: (1) that one or more of n (the many translations) was written in a computer language (nu kotlensri); (2) one or more n was written in the hexadecimal system (nu lensri le nersornumsio); and (3) that one or more n was written in the dancing man code of Sherlock Holmes (nu lensri le danse mrenu tojo smisrisio pe la Crrlak Holmz). Finally, the connective iceci was used twice to make the three cause clauses group right. Iceci is an allolex of ICI, the hyphenating eeshek; the suffix -ci causes it to close-bind the two clauses, i.e., to hyphenate them. See NB3:83 for the behavior of these connectives.
- Ibuo ro, nei nu lensri lo natra lengu.
(And) However, many n (many of the many translations on the board) were written in natural languages.
The new usage we inaugurate here is that while nei originally replaced an indefinite designation (ro notlenfoa je seo), it has now become definite...simply because we have referred to it again. (Like the river of Heraclites, you can't refer to the same indefinite thing twice.) Thus we say that le ro notlenfoa je seo = the many translations of sigma (my button-message) which the narrator referred to the last time has now become the replaceand of nei. So now, when we say ro, nei (again, a comma is required) we are abbreviating ro le ro notlenfoa je seo = many of the (originally) many translations of sigma. In fact, the first time we used nei, we had already made it a definite designation. Every time one repeats a designation of an originally indefinitely described set or multiple, one makes it definite.
- I leu natra lengu ga nu setpai lau lo junga, lo arba, lo polka, ro notbi.
(And) The set of natural languages (I have in mind) was a superset of (included as a subset of) the set (composed of): Chinese, Arabic, Polish, (and) many others.
With leu natra lengu we designate another set non-distributively and intentionally, and if you asked the narrator which natural languages he had in mind as members of this set, he would tell you all the natural languages into which at least one of the many of the originally many translations that were on the chalkboard had been translated. (Whew! One can see why he used an intentional operator here and not lea!) And he now asserts that this set includes as a subset (nu setpai is the converse of setpai = is a set-part/subset of...) a set whose members he now lists with lau, the member-listing operator. This is almost the end of the logic thrash. The rest is easy...well, pretty easy, soi crano.
- I ri le rizgrudjo pa kendiu su, nei ri le terkea ge lengu galpai.
(And) Several of the club-members had already made inquiries about one or more n (the many translations) at several of the college (type of) language departments (organization-parts).
If one wanted to say that the inquisitive club-members had made exhaustive inquiries, i.e., that each had asked about all of the many translations, one would be able to say ra, nei (again, that comma). Actually, this would still be a bit rough. What they undoubtedly inquired about was each of the natural-language-based submultiple of translations in nei. We felt, however, that this was a refinement that not even a logli would bother to make explicit, soi crano.
- La Maik, pa mi hijra. I na lepo vizka mi guo, Mai cutse li, Tu tsedaspa ti! lu.
(New paragraph) Mike before me attended (that is, he was already there). (And) While looking at me, M said (quote) You're responsible (error-responsible) for this! (endquote).
Copyright 1994 by The Loglan Institute, Inc. All rights reserved.
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