From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Sat Sep 23 03:39:16 2006 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Sat, 23 Sep 2006 03:39:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1GR4u5-0004mK-04 for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Sat, 23 Sep 2006 03:38:38 -0700 Received: from phma.optus.nu ([166.82.175.165] helo=ixazon.dynip.com) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1GR4tl-0004lz-0e for lojban-list@lojban.org; Sat, 23 Sep 2006 03:38:22 -0700 Received: from [192.168.25.19] (unknown [192.168.25.19]) by ixazon.dynip.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id F142DCE4BC for ; Sat, 23 Sep 2006 06:37:52 -0400 (EDT) From: Pierre Abbat To: lojban-list@lojban.org Subject: [lojban] synonymy vs. homonymy Date: Sat, 23 Sep 2006 06:37:47 -0400 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200609230637.48809.phma@phma.optus.nu> X-Spam-Score: -2.2 (--) X-archive-position: 12613 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: phma@phma.optus.nu Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list I came upon a collection of writeups by Jim Hurford, one of which is called "Why Synonymy is Rare". He ran an experiment to find out why homonyms are common, even in languages which don't borrow from other languages, while synonyms are rare and are usually the result of borrowing. In Lojban homonymous brivla are forbidden, while synonyms exist, resulting from two people borrowing different words from another language or using different phrases to make lujvo. http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~amag/langev/author/jhurford.html phma To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.