From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Wed May 26 20:55:53 1993 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Wed, 26 May 1993 15:26:34 -0400 Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 0368; Wed, 26 May 93 15:24:24 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 0287; Wed, 26 May 93 14:57:50 EDT Date: Wed, 26 May 1993 19:55:53 +0100 Reply-To: ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK Sender: Lojban list From: Mr Andrew Rosta Subject: Re: Cowan on morphology X-To: lojban@cuvma.BITNET, conlang@diku.dk To: Erik Rauch In-Reply-To: (Your message of Mon, 24 May 93 21:19:15 O.) Status: O X-Status: Message-ID: John Cowan writes: > Mr Andrew Rosta writes: > I believe that the best word to characterize the relationship between > morpheme meaning and compound-word meaning is "motivated", in more or > less Lakoff's sense: the meanings of morphemes do not determine the > meanings of compounds, but do give excellent general guidelines to that > meaning. Not everything in the world can be fitted into a dichotomy > of "arbitrary" vs. "predictable". (a) The grammar at present does not require compounds to be motivated. (b) Compounds can be motivated without self-segregating morphology. > > 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. > > I don't see this. If you treat the compound words as beyond useful > analysis, they are no harder to acquire than any other system of > construction, including the most arbitrary. We acquire English words > easily, but have to learn morphemic analysis painfully -- and in many > cases, even the learned may be in doubt. Lojban compounds have lots of 'allologues' (I don't know the technical term, if there is one): the same word may be spelt & pronounced in numerous different ways. This makes them especially tough to learn. ---- And.