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Date: Tue, 28 May 2013 14:54:56 +0200
From: selpa'i <seladwa@gmx.de>
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Subject: Re: [lojban] cmevla as a class of brivla
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la .tijlan. cu cusku di'e
> On 27 May 2013 17:48, selpa'i <seladwa@gmx.de <mailto:seladwa@gmx.de>>
> wrote:>
>  >> But what happens whether "la betsemes solvor" wants to marry "la
>  >> selpa'i tsani"? Oops. What should we do with them? Do we forbid them
>  >> to marry because the child's name violates the language naming rules?
>  >
>  >
>  > You'd have to call them something like {la broda me la .betsemes.
> selpa'i}. It's very ugly, but because there is a way to make it work,
> it's not broken, just inconvenient. Or so goes the argument.
>
> In the Western academic tradition, citation is made with the source
> author's surname, and the whole name is inverted in the bibliography so
> that the surname comes first to be sorted. This practice would look like
> {solvor co betsemes} with the current anti-tanru order of cmene
> ({solvor} being the surname/modifier). Instead, we could be consistent
> with the general head-final order of tanru and have the "first" name
> come after the modifying surname(s):
>
> lo mlatu ratcu
> a rat which is related to a cat (e.g. caught or eaten by a cat)
>
> la solvor betsemes
> Betsemes who is related to Solvor (e.g. born to or raised by Solvor)

This brings up a point that has to be laid out clearly. Is a string of 
cmevla to be considered a single name, or is each cmevla to be seen 
seperately? Currently, {la .solvor.betsemes.} is just a single name, 
without any real structure. The Merge must decide whether to keep CMEVLA 
strings atomic as a whole (Option 1) or to split them apart just like 
normal tanru (Option 2).

Option 2 has the effect that some multi-cmevla would undergo a slight 
change in meaning, e.g. imagine {la .klaus.peter.} whose name consists 
of two equal parts, neither of which can be considered to modify the 
other. Or imagine someone whose name contains a glottal stop. The effect 
that Option 2 would have on such names *might* be negligible, I'm not 
sure. {la .klaus.peter.} would be a tanru name, so it means a "klaus" 
type of "peter".

In any case, we could manipulate such names freely. We can {.klaus. bo 
.peter.} or {.peter. co .klaus.} because once split, the above problem 
doesn't exist anymore (it's effectively a case of {BRIVLA bo/co 
BRIVLA}), though it still makes a difference for the meaning of the 
unsplit cmevla string. It becomes especially apparent once you add a 
third component that is supposed to modify the entire cmevla string:

lo xekri .ford.taurus.

Option 1 has it that {melbi} modifies {.ford.taurus.}
Option 2 would interpret it as {(melbi .ford.) .taurus.}

It can't be both, so a decision has to be made.

> "First" names are "first" in the sense that they precede the other parts
> of a person's name in certain natlangs. But it's surnames - also called
> "last" names - which historically come before newly given names that are
> historically "last/newest" names. In several Asian countries, the
> historically-first "last" name comes first, and the historically-last
> "first" name comes last. This is analogous to the biological
> nomenclature, where the generic name precedes the specific name, such as
> "Giraffa camelopardalis rothschildi". In a sense, "Giraffa" is a
> surname, shared by different descendents of the genus. If we were to
> Lojbanize this composite name, I wouldn't expect it to be inverted for
> no good reason. (And the fact that certain components of such biological
> names are readily available as non-cmevla (i.e. gismu, lujvo, fu'ivla)
> while others aren't, is another argument for allowing the use of both
> word-types in a seamless manner.) (FWIW, the order of surname is also
> somewhat related to endianness. Wikipedia often uses the big-endian YMD
> format, again most common in certain Asian countries, for easier sorting
> of dates in the table.)
>
> Or perhaps we could radically change the default tanru order to
> head-initial, which would be consistent with the right-branching NOI,
> GOI, ME, NU, etc:

Please no. The entire language is generally left-branching, apart from 
{bo}. Let's not revert something so fundamental.

In what way are ME or NU right-branching? To me, the term "branching" or 
"grouping" in this context means the grouping of identical (or similar) 
items in succession, for instance:

broda brode brodi -> (broda brode) brodi
X .e Y .a Z       -> (X .e Y) .a Z

Some constructs are head-initial, but those have two different 
components interacting instead, e.g. {KOhA NOI}. I think we need to 
dinstinguish between these different situations of branching.

I don't think it's a good idea to get rid of symmetry. The whole point 
of The Merge is to *increase* symmetry, is it not?

mu'o mi'e la selpa'i

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