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To: snark.uu.NET!lojban-list
Subject: Re: Proposed changes to lexeme ZIhA grammar 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 29 May 90 13:34:02 EDT."
             <m0haASA-0002QfC@marob.masa.com> 
Date: Thu, 31 May 90 09:23:26 -0700
Status: RO


> PROPOSED CHANGE:
> 
> Scrap the entire system except for a single cmavo, "zi'e", of lexeme ZIhE.

Just a brief note.  Old Loglan was intended to be a "logical language",
and hence logical connectives were a major design feature, so that
essentially you could "speak symbolic logic", believed in those days to
be helpful for the thought processes.  Lojban is intended to carry on
the Loglan tradition.  As a result there has come to be a plethora of
logical connective grammar forms for just about every substructure in
the grammar.

In -gua!spi the logical connectives were one of the first features to
go. In my Loglan writing I found that I used them surprisingly rarely. 
I won't give examples, but -gua!spi emphasizes constructions like
these, chosen because these are what I found I used often, all of which
are handled via gismu and their arguments, not special grammar:

1.  A set or list with explicitly stated members.  (Coffee, tea or milk:
	choose one from the set.)  (An old Loglan puzzle; try translating
	that in Lojban.)
2.  The union or intersection of sets -- the result may be left as a set
	or may be extended.
3.  A logical sentence connective (also causal, also any other gismu with
	two event arguments).
4.  An anaphor for a previous sentence, with replacement arguments.  
	(Example: Karen wants to go swimming.  Me too.  Meaning: I (speaker)
	want to go swimming; "I" replaces "Karen".)

If I remember right, Lojban supports all of these fairly neatly, but
-gua!spi is different in relying on them exclusively.

James F. Carter        (213) 825-2897
UCLA-Mathnet;  6221 MSA; 405 Hilgard Ave.; Los Angeles, CA, USA  90024-1555
Internet: jimc@math.ucla.edu            BITNET: jimc%math.ucla.edu@INTERBIT
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