From LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU Sat Mar 6 22:52:07 2010 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Wed, 26 May 1993 13:26:17 -0400 Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 9421; Wed, 26 May 93 13:25:25 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 9347; Wed, 26 May 93 13:11:32 EDT Date: Wed, 26 May 1993 18:03:16 +0100 Reply-To: ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK Sender: Lojban list From: Mr Andrew Rosta Subject: Re: Cowan on morphology X-To: Logical Language Group X-Cc: conlang@diku.dk, lojban@cuvma.BITNET To: Erik Rauch In-Reply-To: (Your message of Sat, 22 May 93 14:47:09 EDT.) <9305221847.AA21970@grebyn.com> Status: O X-Status: X-From-Space-Date: Wed May 26 19:03:16 1993 X-From-Space-Address: @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Message-ID: > I don't see how our morphology for compounds has anything to do with > learnability of >gismu<. You can learn gismu without learning either > rafsi or lujvo. By "gismu" I meant "the grammar of gismu", i.e. meaning, phonological structure, morphology. There is a distinction between morphological gismu & "lexical" gismu. I don't know what the proper term is for the category that includes a gismu & its associated rafsi. > I can't speak for Nick or Colin, but I suspect that most often, people > arew writing without particular regard for their audience, or perhaps > to write at an audience that they know will be using the word lists, > or to write for their peers in the use of the language, who have a > reasonable chance of knowing the rafsi in question. I agree that it > would be nice to have more texts aimed at beginners, but people don't > write such texts. I agree. I meant simply that although it is *possible* for peopleto use 5-letter rafsi, they don't in practise. I'm not suggesting people *ought* to use 5-letter rafsi. > My statement about use of rafsi applied to the experiences we have had > here in LIVE conversation, both conversation sessions, and at LogFests. > Very few lujvo, and the ones that are used are composed of rafsi that > are well known (like 'sel-' for se conversion, etc.), and I myself use > some expanded lujvo, when creating them on the fly - OR, if I get a blank > look, I expand it immediately for the listener. I think the conversations > on the IRC have also minimized lujvo. But is the use of expanded rafsi due to speakers being considerate, or to speakers not being fluent enough to *use* shorter rafsi? > A lujvo based on klama in final position should have something to do with > 'klama'ing. Now the language won't always be under prescriptive control, > but while it is, I suspect that no 'sapphire' ending in 'klama' words will > get into the dictionary. Indeed, at the moment within the community, there > remains a very strong literalism trend that objected to the relatively > lesser sloppiness of JCB, who used 'zmadu' (x makes why from z) for causals > in a very malglico manner. The standard that we teach is that a lujvo > should represent one specific meaning from among the possible meanings that > the associated tanru would have, recognizing that some amount of tanru > modification could take place to bring places fromt he modifier terms into > the lujvo. The primary debate has actually been whether the determination of > such place structures should be more or less algorithmic from the source > tanru, which practice has NOT been accepted. But Nick's writings on lujvo > making are promoting a standard only one step less drastic. I'm just going by what the grammar says. If the above paragraph represents official policy, the rules on lujvo formation should be tightened. > Loglan pre-GMR was very much like what you suggest would be better - > allowing jbama and klama to both be represented by -ama in a compound. > It was not as you say - people had to memorize every word they wanted to use, > and to rely on the dictionary for every little thing they did. The result > was that there was far less Loglan text written than you see these days > being posted to Lojban List. And people DIDN'T like it, and they complained. > And one noted linguist (Zwicky) was especially critical of this. I think this would depend on the compounding rules, & also on how phonologically distinct gismu are from each other. I didn't actuallysuggest that allowing -ama to represent _jbama_ & _klama_ would be better; I suggested that regular compounding rules would be better, & cited -ama as an example. In Zwicky's 1969 _Language_ review I cannot find a criticism of Loglan's morphotactics. I can, however, find a criticism (p448, top) of the lack of semantically regular, grammatically prescribed word formation rules. ---- And