From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Thu Apr 15 09:52:18 1993 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Wed, 14 Apr 1993 10:13:33 -0400 Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 4262; Wed, 14 Apr 93 10:13:09 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 3481; Wed, 14 Apr 93 09:56:13 EST Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1993 23:52:18 +1000 Reply-To: Nick Nicholas Sender: Lojban list From: Nick Nicholas Subject: Lujvo Paper, part 4.1 (continuing from 3.3) X-To: Lojban Mailing List To: Erik Rauch Status: OR Message-ID: 4. Some common lujvo patterns. Many of the lujvo we have collected are based on a small number of tertanru or seltanru. These lujvo fall into natural patterns, so it is obviously desirable we use these regularities as much as possible to streamline their place structures. If many lujvo are based on the same tertanru, it makes sense to try to have their place structures follow the same patterns. In lujvo-making in general, the specific meaning and context of use of a lujvo may alter its place structure from the patterns we have encouraged. These patterns, however, which correspond a lot to other languages' affixes, rather than compound words, are so prevalent that the need for such subtleties is eroded. We list the most common such patterns below. 4.1. {rinka}- and {gasnu}- based lujvo. These lujvo have a long history in Lojban. They have been an impetus to lujvo place structure investigation, through their well-defined place structures as belenu-lujvo, and through their similarity to transitivising and causative affixes in other languages. They are extremely productive, and help make Lojban much more speakable by simplifying the structural representation of complex GDS's. By looking only at the keywords in the gismu lists, Lojban users may be unaware that English often expresses two distinct concepts with the same verb, where Lojban must use two different bridi. As discussed above, the English verb "to sink" has two meanings. The intransitive meaning, as in "The boat sinks", is that something is lowered. The transitive, as in "The Biddleonian sunk two ships", is that some agent cause something to be lowered. Lojban gismu usually express intransitive concepts; , for example, the related concept of immersion is expressed by {jinru} as: entity x1 is immersed in liquid x2. The related transitive concept is expressed by the GDS {tu'a da cu rinka lenu de jinru di}, or {da gasnu lenu de jinru di}. As we discussed in the first section, it makes more sense to speakers of other languages to express this transitive concept as a single selbri: {jinryri'a} or {jinrygau}. {broda zei rinka} lujvo have the place structure: r1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5 r3; {broda zei gasnu} lujvo have the place structure: g1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5: these are belenu-lujvo *par excellence*. With the old gismu place structures, {le rinka} was an agent, and {rinka}-based lujvo were prevalent. When raising was elminated from the place structure of {rinka}, and {le rinka} became a cause rather than a causer, {gasnu} became the preferred tertanru. This is because people prefer to speak of relations between agents {lei gasnu no'u lei jai rinka} and patients {lei jai se gasnu no'u lei jai se rinka}, rather than causes {lei rinka} and effects {lei se rinka}. Note that these lujvo can not only do the equivalent of transitivising an intransitive, or making an already transitive verb a causitive (eg. basti: x1 replaces x2 in circumstances x3 -> basygau: x1 (agent) replaces x2 with x3 in circumstances x4; the transitive/intransitive dichotomy is, of course, irrelevant in Lojban). They can also affect what we would consider nouns or adjectives in English. This is consistent with similar affixes in other languages. For example, {glare}: x1 is hot by standard x2, can give {glagau}, to heat: x1 (agent) makes x2 hot by standard x3. Or {litki}: x1 is a liquid of composition x2 under conditions x3, can give {likygau}, to liquefy: x1 (agent) causes x2 to be a liquid of composition x3 under conditions x4. This particular case is problematic: x2 seems redundant, and this may indicate that {gasnu} is the wrong tertanru. {galfi} is a more appropriate tertanru in some such cases. One should beware that, particularly with {gasnu}, the seltanru need not necessarily be in a {belenu} relation with the tertanru. It may specify the manner of the tertanru instead. {kalsygau}, for example, may not mean "to make somethic chaotic (to mess something up)"; it may simply mean "to act chaotic, to do something chaotically". In either case, but particularly in the latter, the lujvo-maker may have to augment the lujvo to disambiguate it. Such disambiguation could be left for a dictionary, but that seems too great a complication for no good reason. 4.2. {zmadu}- and {mleca}- lujvo. Such lujvo also mirror a frequent construct in other languages: comparatives. These lujvo express the concept of exceeding in a way more familiar to speakers of other languages than the corresponding GDS. Compare: I am six years younger than you. .i mi citmau do lo nanca be li xo .i mi zmadu do leni da citno kei lo nanca be li xo The {da} in the {leni citno} phrase corresponds to a bound variable in a lambda expression, as discussed recently on Lojban List; it is substituted in turn by {mi} and {do}. Its place is not included in the place structure of the corresponding lujvo. Thus, a {broda zei zmadu} lujvo has the place structure: z1 z2 b2 b3 b4 b5 z4, and a {mleca zei zmadu} lujvo has the place structure: m1 m2 b2 b3 b4 b5 m4. This place structure makes sense as a {belenu}-lujvo, as the GDS-lujvo relation exemplified above shows. It has the disadvantage of displacing the {ve zmadu} place by an indefinite number of places, which varies for each lujvo. This may eventually be reason enough to jumble the placesm treating this as a je-lujvo, and placing z4 *before* the seltanru places. For the time being, we have left the place structure in {belenu}-arrangement. These lujvo are also extremely productive, {zmadu} much more so than {mleca}. They are used much more frequently than {zmadu} and {mleca} themselves as selbri. Ambiguity in such lujvo (ie. the seltanru having a relation other than {belenu} with the tertanru) is unlikely. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Nick S. Nicholas, "Rode like foam on the river of pity CogSci & CompSci student, Turned its tide to strength University of Melbourne, Australia. Healed the hole that ripped in living" nsn@{munagin.ee|mundil.cs}.mu.oz.au - Suzanne Vega, Book Of Dreams ______________________________________________________________________________