From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Thu Aug 09 06:18:01 2007 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Thu, 09 Aug 2007 06:18:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.67) (envelope-from ) id 1IJ7to-0005vW-8k for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Thu, 09 Aug 2007 06:18:00 -0700 Received: from nf-out-0910.google.com ([64.233.182.186]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.67) (envelope-from ) id 1IJ7tj-0005vI-DM for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Thu, 09 Aug 2007 06:17:59 -0700 Received: by nf-out-0910.google.com with SMTP id 4so118906nfv for ; Thu, 09 Aug 2007 06:17:49 -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:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=lGxxpCHuzbVp1EczkmbAuapDiGCEQx5AhQLbEd3ZRGs+Rz+l5DZIP1BuRsjD2BLGySQalbiojvgVXtGRALAnAm0c1CYVEP7FwOmbZL8IHqXgAwtRw2B1NPjViGfqQF6IzIOuyU+g90nOr7IoiGrDAGTHsmdt7Iew+kUretyjayY= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=beta; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=fVpEBpCWKL+bbFQLEYnT8OEuGbjr2OiGPGLybYRDsIpKmf4kf+Dv6KnJPxuRF1eU0A+3lt9e34JLHaaZzOhhkjMREDUt2/jxIsdWE8JeG1zPlpVKvjiMN/Ap+9WOAd28YTylHK0UM7tnkCV7dPju0WK2PUCom+rJ4UGlLzBeoSM= Received: by 10.86.81.8 with SMTP id e8mr1537921fgb.1186665469191; Thu, 09 Aug 2007 06:17:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.86.86.13 with HTTP; Thu, 9 Aug 2007 06:17:49 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <925d17560708090617u63b53f2i42e547c0964e3b63@mail.gmail.com> Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2007 10:17:49 -0300 From: "=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jorge_Llamb=EDas?=" To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: anti-Zipfian gismu rant In-Reply-To: <46C22BBB@webmail.bcpl.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <46C22BBB@webmail.bcpl.net> X-Spam-Score: -0.0 X-Spam-Score-Int: 0 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 5319 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: jjllambias@gmail.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners On 8/9/07, turnip wrote: > >{natmritaliano} is not type-3. Type-3 would be {natmrxitaliano}. > > Please explain why? All type-3 are of one of these forms: CVCC-r-C... CCVC-r-C... CVC-r-C... (where -r- becomes -n- if one of the adjacents C is an r, or -l- if one is an r and the other an n.) {natmritaliano} still happens to be of fu'ivla form, but it's an ordinary type-4, not a type-3. The reason is that CVCC-r-V... is not guaranteed to be a fu'ivla. For example, natmriblanu, from a hypothetical nationality "iblanu", is a lujvo nat-mri-blanu. So when the borrowed word to be type-3-fu'ivlaized starts with a vowel, an x is preappended in order to make it start with a consonant. > > I use the unofficial {talno} for "Italian". > > I would use it, too. But the gismu list was baselined, so that means no > more additions, right? No more official additions, right. But we are talking of using the language, not of making official additions. > >{ricyratcu} does not strike me as too long for "squirrel" either, > > Yes, that's true, but squirrel is the lowest frequency word of the high > frequency group. I could have used raccoon or rodent, as well, both having > longer lojban translations, but slightly less frquent in the British corpus as > well. That was a frequency list for English words. I don't think I ever talk of squirrels much, since there are no squirrels where I live. So for me at least, having "squirrel" in the gismu list would be almost as odd as having {sfofa}. > My point of the exercise was not so much to ask why certain words are > gismu, but rather why certain others are not, despite their high frequency in > natural languages, High frequency in English, in this case. Some concepts will be high frequency in all/most/many languages, but others, especially animal names, foods, etc, will probably vary quite a lot from language to language. > and (hand-in-hand with this) their basic conceptualness > (outside of squirrel or zebra, but including things like rodent, which has a > relatively low frequency, but is a pretty basic concept that could be used, > and which could replace/augment the ratcu and smacu we have now, and allow > lujvo for squirrels, beavers, capybara, or any of the 29 families (2277 > species) of rodents). > > (Hey, warned you it was a rant) I know, I find many oddities in the gismu list too, but on the whole I find that the range of concepts is covered pretty well. When something basic seems to be missing and no simple lujvo seems to work, the best policy is to coin a type-4 fu'ivla (not one of the monster type-3) or even an unofficial gismu, but other than for names of animals/plants and cultures this is very rare, which shows that the official list is pretty comprehensive . I have much more trouble in general with weird place structures than with missing concepts though. mu'o mi'e xorxes