From LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU Sat Mar 6 22:51:59 2010 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Fri, 21 May 1993 13:39:23 -0400 Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 9077; Fri, 21 May 93 13:38:31 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 6876; Fri, 21 May 93 13:39:00 EDT Date: Fri, 21 May 1993 18:20:40 +0100 Reply-To: ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK Sender: Lojban list From: Mr Andrew Rosta Subject: Re: Cowan on morphology X-To: lojban@cuvma.BITNET, Logical Language Group To: Erik Rauch In-Reply-To: (Your message of Fri, 21 May 93 10:28:33 EDT.) <9305211432.AA111051@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> Status: O X-Status: X-From-Space-Date: Fri May 21 19:20:40 1993 X-From-Space-Address: @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Message-ID: <_kb2Tyz-ptO.A.m8H.P00kLB@chain.digitalkingdom.org> > And's logic escapes me. If meaning is not predictable, then self-segregating > morphology has no value at all??? And it ADDS complexity to the language > and the task of acquiring vocabulary. It has a little value, but is not remotely worth the cost of Lojban's morphological complexity. It undeniably adds to the complexity of the language. It adds to the complexity of learning gismu. It is not the only possible solution to the task of learning compounds: compounds could be formed by regular principles without necessarily being self-segregating. > Based on what it replaced - the old Loglan system of cramming words together > in whatever way seemed useful, the Lojban system is immensely better AND > easier both for learning vocabulary, AND for inventing new vocabulary on > the fly - aprocess that will occupy Lojbanists for many years while the > vocabulary remains much smaller than that of English. What is needed for inventing new vocab on the fly is regular rules for compounding, not necessarily self-segregation. > Having the self-segregating morphology means that you need to memorize > the morphological roots that are unique, but as I have argued often before, > this is not that onerous a task since the optional root values are from > a limited set of forms derivable from the gismu, and you can always use > the expanded form that is unambiguously associated with the gismu for any > listener (THE thing to do when you are writing or speaking to an audience > that may not knwo the rafsi well enough to dissassemble your creation, or > deducethe meaning from context). One-to-one communication where each participant makes allowances for the competence of the other is only a small fraction of communication in a language of a modern culture, Lojban included, probably. When Nik or Colin, for example, post in Lojban to this list, they don't use expanded rafsi, even though they know that significantly fewer readers of the list know rafsi than know gismu. > However, with that morphology you have significant clues as to meaning, and > moreover, because of the self-segregating quality, you know that a large > body of meaniungs is excluded. i.e if the final morphological term is a > rafsi for klama (come/go), you know beyond all doubt, that the word relates > to going/coming of some type, and not to being blue, beating your wife, or > compiling a computer program. You don't know beyond all doubt. Even if the last rafsi is identified as klama's, the lujvo could refer to sapphires, to pick a random example. Say the non-self-segrating, but simple & regular rules for compounding require that for the final morpheme you strip off the initial consonants of the gismu. In this case, the last morpheme of a compound ending in _-ama_ is going to stand for either _klama_ or _jbama_ (bomb). Now I would gladly sacrifice tthe complexity of the self-segregation (i.e. having to learn the rafsi & tosmabru rules, etc. etc.) for the price of having to guess from context whether the compound refers to a kind of going or to a kind of bomb (assuming I was unfamiliar with the word). ----- And.