From jcowan@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxxx Wed Nov 24 08:59:57 1999 X-Digest-Num: 292 Message-ID: <44114.292.1590.959273825@eGroups.com> Date: Wed, 24 Nov 1999 11:59:57 -0500 From: John Cowan Does the placement or repetition of a denpa bu between words affect their > meaning or grammaticality? (Is "lojban. .e" identical to "lojban. e" and > "lojban... .. .. e"?) They all mean just the same. > Could stress be optionally marked by accents "á", "é", "í", "ó", "ú" (which > are wholeheartedly ASCII and are supported in plain text) instead of > capitalization? Well, not technically ASCII. Latin-1, yes. It won't be part of the standard orthography, but there's nothing preventing you from doing it. In addition, capitalizing just the vowel is really enough, which reduces learning burden. However, case is such a fundamental part of the Latin alphabet that unless you want to learn Lojban and nothing but (improbable) you will end up learning both case forms. > Could certain symbols "stand for" (and be grammatically equivalent to) > commonly used cmavo ("!" for ".ui", ":-)" for "zo'o", ">:(" for ".oi" and > "«", "»" for "lu", "li'u" (I believe I've seen this one already used.))? > They would be read the same way and would be only to simplify (and colorize) > writing. Yes. We sort of prefer to add the mark to the word, which means for example that "!" can mark any attitudinal, thus "!ui !uo". -- John Cowan http://www.reutershealth.com jcowan@reutershealth.com Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis vom dies! / Schliess eurer Aug vor heiliger Schau Den er genoss vom Honig-Tau / Und trank die Milch vom Paradies. -- Coleridge (tr. Politzer)