From LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU Sat Mar 6 22:44:36 2010 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Tue, 1 Jun 1993 23:20:16 -0400 Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 4841; Tue, 01 Jun 93 23:19:21 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 7177; Tue, 01 Jun 93 23:20:40 EDT Date: Tue, 1 Jun 1993 23:19:06 EDT Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: TECH: more on morphology problem - some opionions X-To: nsn@mullian.ee.mu.OZ.AU X-Cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch Status: RO X-Status: X-From-Space-Date: Tue Jun 1 19:19:06 1993 X-From-Space-Address: @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Message-ID: The problem with standardizing morphological variants when borrowing, is that it presumes that the borrower actuially KNOWS the language from which the borrowing is taking place. You know Latin; I don't. If I were to want to do a borrowing, I could look it up in a few dictionaries, see that a Latinate word is used in all of them, and then use Spanish (or less likely French) as the basis for the borrowing and be reasonably close. I can't do that with more rigid rules. We don;t want to make it too difficult for people to add words to the language, especially lea'vla, which we are going to great lengths to make especially easy to do ad hoc. Maybe when we go to make type IV le'avla, some rule like you propose can be considered. But the idiosyncracies of Type IV le'avla making mean that it is less likely that you will be able to make such a rule stick in practice lojbab