From robin@xxxxxxx.xxx.xxx Mon Apr 26 08:16:21 1999 X-Digest-Num: 125 Message-ID: <44114.125.718.959273824@eGroups.com> Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1999 18:16:21 +0300 From: Robin Turner Reading through the lesson on Lojban names, I found that you had forgotten to > mention the possibility of using brivla anywhere that cmene goes. For > instance, you could say "mi'e melbi", or "la stace cu citka lo cirla". > > But on the other hand, the beginner may find it too hard to start with brivla > already in lesson 1... In the current version I've just introduced it as a matter of interest at the end, and recommended the normal Lojban practice of either chopping off the last vowel or adding S (actually I don't always do this myself, but again for beginners some overkill is useful). As for {mi'e}+brivla, I don't think it's common enough to be worth mentioning, especially since {mi'e} is in a class of words not yet covered anyway - I only put it in because of its obvious usefulness. In fact I intend to take this attitude with cmavo in general, teaching the bare minimum to express what you want, rather than dealing with whole areas at a time - if people want that, they can read the Book. My current thinking on cmavo to be taught is as follows: Lesson 1 - basic attitudinals, la, mi 2 - le, cu, zo'e, do 3 - ko, xu, ma, mo, na 4 - li, lo, loi, lei, so'a/e/i/o/u 5 - xo, su'i, ni'u (for telling the time) 6 - nothing new here apart from maybe .i - it'll be a revision and vocabulary-expanding lesson 7 - basic pro-sumti and sumti connectives, goi, nu, kei 8 - na'e, nai, ru'e, cu'i, sai, cai (with a few more attitudinals) 9 - pu, ca, ba, zi/a/u, vi/a/u, ku, 11 - non-logical bridi connectives, a few discursives, quotation 12 - revision 13 - conversion and place tags 14 - du, du'u, poi, po'u, noi, no'u, pe 15 - a few BAI modals 16 - lujvo construction 17 - logical tanru, bridi and selbri connectives {zo'o.ii} 18 - revision I reckon this should be enough for a beginners' course, in that it should give those who complete it the ability to: (a) express most things they want (if not always in the exact way they want it); (b) read most of the Lojban on the list with the help of the web glosser; (c) add to their knowledge by looking up areas that interest them in the book. An example of (c) is that once you've got the basic idea of the tense system, it's easy to look up things like interval properties and event contours, while if you try to tackle the whole lot, all those cmavo get mixed up (in fact I still can't temember half of them!). co'o mi'e robin.