From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Sun May 20 18:20:24 2007 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Sun, 20 May 2007 18:20:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1HpwZT-0003po-Pz for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Sun, 20 May 2007 18:20:24 -0700 Received: from phma.optus.nu ([166.82.175.165] helo=ixazon.dynip.com) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1HpwZN-0003pZ-Kp for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Sun, 20 May 2007 18:20:23 -0700 Received: from chausie (unknown [192.168.7.4]) by ixazon.dynip.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 469B2CEB09 for ; Sun, 20 May 2007 21:20:15 -0400 (EDT) From: Pierre Abbat To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: distinction between gismu & cmavo Date: Sun, 20 May 2007 21:20:12 -0400 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.5 References: <2f91285f0705201027w32358e69v3e6093496d67cc5d@mail.gmail.com> <20070520205750.GM7871@digitalkingdom.org> <2f91285f0705201557o75faa50avf0eaedd5f309881@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <2f91285f0705201557o75faa50avf0eaedd5f309881@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-15" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by Ecartis Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200705202120.13810.phma@phma.optus.nu> X-Spam-Score: 0.5 X-Spam-Score-Int: 5 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 4554 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: phma@phma.optus.nu Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners On Sunday 20 May 2007 18:57, Vid Sintef wrote: > Isn't an affix something to be "added" to a base word and alter its > original grammatical nature (like the English "-er" in "longer" or the > Czech "nej-" in "nejhorší" or the Japanese "sa-" in "samayou")? If it is > that rafsi are to be "joined" together to make longer words, mustn't they > be certain "root" words themselves from which that resulting longer words' > meanings would derive, possessing proper semantic essences even though they > are not to be spoken as single words. If it is a convention to not use > rafsi individually, still that doesn't stop them from possessing the nature > of base words. There are three types of affix in languages: 1. Affixes that make compound words. All gismu rafsi are of this type (including "mau", which semantically corresponds to "-er", which is a derivational affix). 2. Derivational affixes. Some cmavo rafsi are of this type. These are usually prefixes in Lojban, such as "nun-", "tol-", "kam-". 3. Inflectional affixes. These don't exist in Lojban. phma