neither a noun nor adjective nor a verb.  It can behave as a     noun, an adjective AS WELL AS a verb.  So, how would you like     to describe it?     Jens In syntactical terms rather than morphological, i.e. I     Jens wouldn't like to determine its class outside a context.     The most straightforward way is to call it selbri .     Jens Wouldn't the most straightforward be to call tavla     Jens tavla ? No.   When you analyze  the grammar of a  language, you have to divide words  into   a  limited  number of  classes.   Or  else   it would be difficult, if not impossible, to write down the grammar rules. Now, the problem that we  have agreed on, is  that applying the  Latin model  to divide words into separate  classes is not always desirable, because many languages  do not fit  into the Latin model.   So, Lojban uses  its      own     classification  scheme.      There     is   now verb-noun-adjective-adverb distinction.     Instead,  Lojban words are classified into gismu , sumti , lujvo , etc. All languages fit, as far as we know, into one model that is being continuously refined

Jens == Jens S Larsen < This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it writes:     What's wrong with substituting sumti for argument ?  How is     argument easier to understand than sumti ?     Jens It's been used thousands of times before with the same     Jens meaning. Which meaning of argument are you refering to?  Huh?     BTW, argument is an ambiguous English word.     Jens Not in the context of predicate logic. YES, in the arguments on predicate logic.     Jens The symbols are better for writing, the words are better for     Jens speaking. Well?  Why do I have to  speak (to myself) when I  think?  I can think both visually and/or verbally.     If you're to teach a Russian, how would you find an equivalent     Russian word for articles (i.e. the word class for 'a', 'and'     and 'the')?  You may be able to find a translation in an     English-Russian dictionary, but would your student understand     that translation that you use?     Jens According to traditional grammar, and is a conjunction,     Jens not an article (both may be termed particle, though).   .................^^^^^^ But what would a Russian think about  this word article in the first place?     Jens In     Jens universal grammar there's a class called determiners that     Jens comprises the articles as well as pronouns.  The notion of     Jens definiteness is well-known in Russian (as it probably is in     Jens all languages), although it isn't always expressed with a     Jens determiner, but often with word order or case. So, what exactly are the articles ?  What are they for?  Exactly when and how should I employ them?     Similarly, the Chinese translation of tense (grammatical     time-marking) is not comprehensible to a Chinese who know no     language that has tense.     Jens What about the particle le in Mandarin? It's not  a tense marker.   It marks  temporal aspect

 Jens According to traditional grammar, and is a conjunction,  Jens not an article (both may be termed particle, though).   ..........^^^^^^   But what would a Russian think about this word article in the   first place?  Jens The average Russian would probably associate it with  Jens newspapers.  Ask in soc.culture.russian if you want more  Jens than a guess. So,  how would the Russian translation  for (grammatical) article be useful to teach English to a Russian?  Why not  simply use the English word article to teach  that concept, so  that he can more easily ask an Englishman about it? The average English-speakers don't know that a and the are termed articles, they speak the language regardless.  Learning to understand and use a language is something very different from learning grammar

Jens == Jens S Larsen < This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it writes:     Jens It makes perfect sense in a new language to try and     Jens avoid homonyms and synonyms, but that speaks for the     Jens learnability of this language as a whole, it says nothing     Jens about the terminology of other languages. You have to learn new  concepts anyway when you  learn a new language. Then, why not accept using new words for those new concepts?   Why insist on  your native language?   You're not learning it.  You're just using it as a _meta_-langauge to learn the new language.     Jens The average English-speakers don't know that a and the     Jens are termed articles, they speak the language regardless. But  if you tell  them that a ,   an and the  are called articles, they can grasp the concept quickly.  It is easy to learn from familiar examples.  (It is also important to learn from counter-examples.)  Can you do so to a Russian for the concept article ?     Jens I was thinking about using the Chinese word for time.  In     Jens Danish it's common to use the same word ( tid ) for tense     Jens and time .  (OTOH we distinguish between Esp'o tempo and     Jens fojo ).  An example: Well???  How   come fojo  enters  this discussion?   Clearly, fojo (which   means   times , not time )  is  a  very different  word from tempo .       Jens Then there's English -ing, unknown in German, French,     Jens Greenlandic and Danish, and possible to express with -ant-     Jens in Esperanto, even if few do it. English -ing is an instance of temporal aspect.

Clearly, fojo (which   means   times , not time ) is a very different word from tempo . English and French are confusing languages on this.  Esperante Germane Dane  Angle    France