From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Fri May 28 00:12:46 1993 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Sat, 29 May 1993 20:48:01 -0400 Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 5321; Sat, 29 May 93 20:47:07 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 2607; Sat, 29 May 93 20:48:22 EDT Date: Fri, 28 May 1993 04:12:46 EDT Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: self-segregating morphemes X-To: iad@COGSCI.ED.AC.UK X-Cc: conalng@diku.dk, lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch Status: RO X-Status: Message-ID: Actually, it has certainly been argued that the Latin and Greek prefixes and suffixes, in all their proliferation, makes English more expansible and more suitable for its current role as a semi-worl language. (I won't say that I agree with this). Certainly, though, the fact that people are able to learn such large English vocabularies is probably somewhat related to to productive uses of all those prefixes and suffixes. You can learn English wothout learning what these 'rafsi' mean in any concerted form of study, but it is a truism that English speakers who have studied Latin, or Greek, or even one of the Romance tongues, gains an understanding of these 'rafsi' that significantly enhances vocabularyand understanding. (It also makes possible the consideration of languages like Esperanto by English speakers. Given the resistance we English speakers seem to have to learning languages, i suspect that if these roots were not part of the language, there would be even more difficulty in learning French and Spanish, and hence even fewer English speakers would learn another tongue). Myself, I am pleased when I find all the Germanic cognates in Russian that are so recognizable. lojbab