From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Sun Jun 17 02:59:32 2007 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Sun, 17 Jun 2007 02:59:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1HzrXf-0007t6-No for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Sun, 17 Jun 2007 02:59:32 -0700 Received: from an-out-0708.google.com ([209.85.132.241]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1HzrXc-0007sy-TN for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Sun, 17 Jun 2007 02:59:31 -0700 Received: by an-out-0708.google.com with SMTP id b21so330481ana for ; Sun, 17 Jun 2007 02:59:25 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=beta; h=domainkey-signature:received:received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition; b=RcvxypdnwZ40ajA6Q3a3hKydvVblL1IKJk3vXwZOVfIUi9KTc4DMn0S+1EcTVEApTTg/Dp30lUAxDOeD/z38MEEWhZhMo5TtP1sb9pnr46bWlHkm4Mxq9fHEW2mKTipsTFy0ZYk+sUbur22kwtPxxE+2G73aaggYN7QogN58f2Q= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=beta; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition; b=lwTc7jx07y/n5oAl7ZV/tHDUtVsdHQk4wcOGR6TeIJAAoKEouhvB3o9b//DGOgxMIL+cE2BUjcJRvURP08dQHnLf9MS3eFeKw931o1Pn758OmxULZ+7PU0Sei2s4qcKE5g00ERSP50VA/ACQ91RFU/MvhYWspjUGAUm7rH+NcAU= Received: by 10.100.143.11 with SMTP id q11mr2813857and.1182074365030; Sun, 17 Jun 2007 02:59:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.100.122.14 with HTTP; Sun, 17 Jun 2007 02:59:25 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <23dc8c770706170259j5884f3a3s7f44a20ca44a10db@mail.gmail.com> Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2007 10:59:25 +0100 From: "Karl Naylor" To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Dots and spaces (was: Logical connectives) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline X-Spam-Score: 0.0 X-Spam-Score-Int: 0 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 4987 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: karl.org@gmail.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners On 17/06/07, m.kornig@sondal.net wrote: > > (1) la alis e la djan pinxe loi tcati a loi ckafi > Hi Daniel. I don't know about your logical problem but > I think you need points: at the end of names, e.g. > {alis.} and {djan.}, and at the beginning of connectives, > e.g. {.a}, {.e} and {.i}. I've noticed several experienced Lojbanists omit all dots, which doesn't seem to be discussed in the Reference Grammar or the beginners' course, but makes sense since the reader knows where they need to go anyway. As long as there are spaces before any word with an initial vowel and after all cmevla (I think), it's unambiguous. For beginners it may help to see the dots as a reminder that a pause is needed. This raises a point I've been interested by for a while, though: I've don't remember seeing any discussion at all in the RG or LFB of spaces. As I recall it's just assumed that spaces go between words in written Lojban, except where you don't need them. It seems to me there's room for a more thorough treatment. After all, Lojban has at least three mechanisms for signalling to the reader/listener where word boundaries lie: stress rules, spacing and dots. Stress in spoken Lojban I believe is fully explained, but its written equivalent is left for the Lojbanist to figure out. This leads to some puzzlement on the beginners' list as new Lojbanists begin interacting with the more experienced and wonder why some people drop spaces, some drop dots, some use explicit stress (via capitalisation) for all words, etc. Has this issue been discussed before my time, I wonder? Is there any motion to insert discussion of spacing into the RG, or has it been determined that this is unnecessary?