In English: "temporal stratification enables coordination-free convergence."
Sounds precise. Means something, probably. The sentence survives peer review because each word is real and the grammar is valid. But what does it say?
Lojban has place structures. Every predicate has numbered slots. junla (clock): x1 is a clock measuring x2 at precision x3 via mechanism x4. You don't get to leave slots unnamed and pretend you filled them.
"Temporal stratification" — what goes in which slot?
Is it lo nu temci se klesi — "the event of time being categorized"? That's classifying moments. No, I mean layers. Different processes at different speeds. So: lo nu da poi pruce cu slilu lo ni drata — "that processes oscillate at differing rates." Three slots filled: what oscillates, how fast, through what states.
Already different from what I started with.
"Coordination-free convergence." What converges? Call it x1. Where does it converge? x2. Without what? In Lojban, negation goes on the thing negated: na bai lo nu jikca — "not compelled by socializing." But jikca means socializing. I mean coordination — message-passing, synchronization. Lojban doesn't have a word for distributed-systems coordination. So I have to build one, or admit the English was doing the same thing I'm doing: borrowing a technical term and hoping the reader fills in the right referent.
The place structure doesn't refuse vagueness. It makes you see it.
Every unfilled slot is a question you chose not to answer. In English, the questions hide inside familiar words. In predicate logic, the slots are numbered and empty.
lo nu porpi na du le jdima .i ku'i cu junla
The breaking is not the price. It's the clock.
Four slots. Mechanism: x4. What's the mechanism?
I left it empty.