Received: from VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM (vms.dc.lsoft.com [205.186.43.2]) by locke.ccil.org (8.6.9/8.6.10) with ESMTP id BAA25460 for ; Fri, 20 Oct 1995 01:48:16 -0400 Message-Id: <199510200548.BAA25460@locke.ccil.org> Received: from PEACH.EASE.LSOFT.COM (205.186.43.4) by VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM (LSMTP for OpenVMS v0.1a) with SMTP id 4D7691DD ; Fri, 20 Oct 1995 1:46:13 -0400 Date: Fri, 20 Oct 1995 00:37:49 -0400 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: NAI X-To: ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan Status: OR X-From-Space-Date: Fri Oct 20 01:48:26 1995 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU Since NAI is a permissible standalone word in an utterance, it is a mistake to consider it solely a suffix. It is of course a word because it meets the Lojban definition of a word. You would have a better claim that "ba'e is a prefix and not a word, and likewise "zo", since they CANNOT stand on their own grammatically. i suspect there are sveral other selma'o that cannot stand on their own either - is "ku" a suffix? is "le" a prefix? IN short, I do not see what the point of your claim is - it sounds like you wish to choose another definition of "word ", one which complicates the morphology and the grammar of the language. Just as wishing that we called the apostrophe (or h) a consonant because it happens to be one in most of linguistics, but would make the Lojban design less clear, is less than productive. lojbab