From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Thu Jan 05 11:33:29 2006 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Thu, 05 Jan 2006 11:34:10 -0800 (PST) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1EuarZ-000356-8b for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Thu, 05 Jan 2006 11:33:29 -0800 Received: from smtp.mail.umich.edu ([141.211.93.160] helo=skycaptain.mr.itd.umich.edu) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1EuarV-00034y-QL for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Thu, 05 Jan 2006 11:33:29 -0800 Received: FROM centipede.gpcc.itd.umich.edu (centipede.gpcc.itd.umich.edu [141.211.2.212]) BY skycaptain.mr.itd.umich.edu ID 43BD7483.1585.14205 ; 5 Jan 2006 14:33:24 -0500 Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 14:33:22 -0500 (EST) From: Alex Joseph Martini X-X-Sender: alexjm@centipede.gpcc.itd.umich.edu To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: "la" questions In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: <43B59F56.1030508@bcpl.net> <925d17560601011001paebafa6kd80f4f7e25663e11@mail.gmail.com> <008601c6114d$1df5f490$a0d2400a@caroe1> <925d17560601041117x3b36c606wd5c02da6261ff189@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed X-Spam-Score: -2.6 (--) X-archive-position: 2892 X-Approved-By: rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: alexjm@umich.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners >> [ cut ] >> was done. > > Nobody has tried to refute you, so I guess you are right. And if I may > say so, some of those grammatical constructs are ugly compared to the > alternative ungrammatical ones. I would have preferred to have to > write/say "la djan cu klama". > > Hmm, >>mi xorxes<<, "mi betsemes". This sounds like using cmene as > brivla; something like "x1 is called/has the name ". > > [ more cut ] > > This way of using cmene would make "mi'e" unnecessary. > > I think I like this other way much better than the chosen one. And it > was just to save a single "cu"...... > The way I tend to think of the division is that cmene are a sort of 'special word'. Sort of like something that's not truly a word in Lojban but is quoted into the stream of speech. This probably comes to me from the idea of using quotes or other special marks around strings in most programming languages, as I learned several of these before learning Lojban. Perhaps this is more where the original line of thought was, rather than the idea of 'saving a cu'? I haven't studied far enough to run into the limitations that were described earlier in the discussion, but I can see how allowing cmevla to be used more freely would have simplified the grammar of quite a few types of things. mu'o mi'e .alex