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Subject: Re: [lojban] gua\spi
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Am 08.08.2012 19:56, schrieb Jim Carter:
> On Sun, 5 Aug 2012, selpa'i wrote:
>
>> How complete is gua\spi? If it's as usable as Lojban currently is, 
>> I'd say it's very close to complete.
>
> I can see this discussion flying off on multiple tangents: what does 
> it mean for a language to be complete?  I'd say that there is an 
> equivalence class of languages that can express predicate logic, 
> including the natural languages I know, Lojban/Loglan, and gua\spi.  
> Gua\spi's vocabulary is a slight superset of Lojban (I may have thrown 
> out one or two words, and I did add maybe 5% more words), so in that 
> sense gua\spi covers just about the same semantic space that Lojban does.

I realized this reading through the reference grammar again. It seems 
like it can do everything (not an educated opinion, I'm still a 
beginner) that Lojban can do, and I consider Lojban complete enough to 
be used in daily life and in literature.

> "Usable" refers to how easily and accurately the speakers can express 
> what they want (versus whether it can be done even if kludges are 
> needed).  The vendor hypes the product as being usable.

True, but I didn't get the impression you were hyping the product more 
than anybody else would hype their personal conlang.

>
>> So if you have some other texts about the language, more grammar 
>> explanations etc, it would be great to be able to read them.
>
> Unfortunately, the material you've already seen in 
> http://www.math.ucla.edu/~jimc/guaspi/index.html
> is all that I've done.  Sorry.

No problem. I'm still thankful for the documents on that page. I just 
wish that they went at a slower pace.

>
>> Also, you mention that you translated quite a bit of text into 
>> gua\spi. Could you upload that text somewhere? I would like to see 
>> some actual usage of the language.
>
> Actually I said that I'd translated about 20,000 words into Old Loglan.
> Sorry again.

Ah, no problem again. Then I guess I'll have to write my own texts 
instead. :)

>
>> So bottom line, how realistic would you consider it to be that people 
>> could start learning gua\spi? Would you be able to support the 
>> learners if some bigger problems arose? Once more than one person 
>> (you) is at a good level in the language, the burden gets distributed 
>> and eventually, the language will get a life of its own.
>
> I'm ambivalent here -- I would be happy to support someone (you) 
> working on gua\spi, but I need to warn up front that it could not be 
> high-bandwidth support, e.g. like what Robin Powell does for Lojban.  
> May I squeeze in a support tidbit (which could be of interest in 
> Lojban also)? 

Any help is appreciated. I'm currently wrestling with subordinate 
clauses in gua\spi, and if I can't figure them out by myself, I will 
have to ask you for clarification. I expect that after subordinate 
clauses, the rest is straightforward as it's very similar to Lojban 
(numbers, articles, pronouns etc), so I hope to achieve some level of 
independence after this stumbling block. (I'm also still struggling with 
the 5th tone, the others I can easily produce, but I'm making progress).

> From the reference manual, vocabulary chapter intro: "Frequently I 
> have thought that some form or meaning required a new primitive word, 
> or even a change in the grammar, but it has turned out that existing 
> words were more than adequate if creatively used."

I believe that 100%. I won't be trying to invent anything new until I'm 
fluent *fingers crossed*.

>
> Occasionally someone stumbles across gua\spi and sends me mail about 
> it, but I think you (selpa'i) are the first one to dig into it deeply.

Good to know. It motivates me to be the first one to try this.

>
> I think the major value of gua\spi for the Lojban community is in 
> seeing how a similar language does things differently, particularly in 
> the areas of compound words and in MEX.

Yes, I'm currently discovering all the differences and similarities, and 
it's really interesting. I'm not sure how much of it can be used in 
Lojban, but I'm just doing this for its own sake, because I am 
interested in gua\spi itself.

> In about an hour I'm going to be on an airplane to Prague, so I may 
> have a little trouble holding up my end of this thread, but I'll try.

Okay. This thread doesn't seem to be going at a fast pace, anyway. If I 
can't figure out the subordinates, I'll turn to you, if that's okay. 
Though, now that I think about it, I'm not sure I can figure it out 
alone. I've tried for two days and it's still confusing.
For example, in, say:

^:i \ji /crw \kseo ^ve tum \qnou [\ji]
"I eat the cheese with [my] hands."

I can't tell whether the ve-clause is really a clause or if it's just a 
sort of ad-hoc case link which gets filled by "qnou". I was relatively 
sure it's the former. The third case of "tum" gets moved to the first 
position automatically, making "qnou" go into the second case.
But ^ve tum \qnou == \vo X1 \zu tum \qnou, so now I think it's the 
latter. But this would mean that everything gets reduced to an infinitive...

But I'm afraid that if I start asking questions now, I will remember 
more and more things I would like to have clarified, so maybe we should 
do this off-list.

mu'o mi'e la selpa'i

-- 
pilno zo le xu .i lo dei bangu cu se cmene zo lojbo .e nai zo lejbo

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