From LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU Sat Mar 6 22:51:47 2010 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Thu, 20 May 1993 17:49:50 -0400 Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 4994; Thu, 20 May 93 17:49:03 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 9969; Thu, 20 May 93 17:44:50 EDT Date: Thu, 20 May 1993 22:42:37 +0100 Reply-To: ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK Sender: Lojban list From: Mr Andrew Rosta Subject: Cowan on morphology X-To: lojban@cuvma.BITNET To: Erik Rauch Status: O X-Status: X-From-Space-Date: Thu May 20 23:42:37 1993 X-From-Space-Address: @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Message-ID: John Cowan argues that for maximal freedom from syntactic ambiguity, words need to be self-segregating. I agree. He also argues that for maximal freedom from morphological ambiguity, morphemes need to be self-segregating. In Lojban the semantic structure derived from the unambiguous syntactic structure is unambiguous. This justifies the syntax's freedom from ambiguity. But in the case of word-meaning, *only ambiguous* semantic structure can be derived from the unambiguous morphological structure. Whereas if one knows the meanings of the words in a Lojban sentence one may be sure of the sentence's meaning, if one knows only the meanings of the morphemes in a Lojban word one cannot be sure of the word's meaning: the meaning of the compound word has to be stipulated in a dictionary just like any monomorphemic word; the meanings of the morphemes simply serve as possible but not necessary indicators of the sort of meaning the word might have. Since the meaning of Lojban compounds is not predictable, the unambiguous morphology is not really very useful, and it adds extraordinary complexity to the language and to the task of acquiring vocabulary. A more rational design would make words self-segrating, but not morphemes. Even if morphemes fail to self-segregate, they would still serve as clues to the word's meaning. ----- And