From LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU Fri Nov 3 22:34:36 1995 Received: from VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM ([205.186.43.2]) by locke.ccil.org (8.6.9/8.6.10) with ESMTP id LAA00938 for ; Thu, 2 Nov 1995 11:03:35 -0500 Message-Id: <199511021603.LAA00938@locke.ccil.org> Received: from PEACH.EASE.LSOFT.COM (205.186.43.4) by VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.0a) with SMTP id 9C5B36E2 ; Thu, 2 Nov 1995 11:55:47 -0400 Date: Thu, 2 Nov 1995 10:55:26 -0400 Reply-To: Giuliano Lancioni Sender: Lojban list From: Giuliano Lancioni Subject: Re: Ethnic Gismu, Learning To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu Status: OR Jorge wrote: >> 'Boring' is not the polar opposite of zdile! (This way, you use >> tol- like Esperanto mal-, I thought lujvo-making was somewhat less >> trivial). > >Well, in Esperanto there's "teda", I don't think "malamuza" is used >at all. > >What does {tolzdile} mean, then? And how do you propose to say "boring"? >Notice that {zdile} is amusing/entertaining, not amusing/funny. > >In any case, I really don't see much difference between Esperanto mal- and >Lojban tol-. > The matter, I think, is more complex: it involves the role of composition and derivation in language. Lojban does not make use of derivation: in principle, you shouldn't have Esperanto-style affixes at your disposal. Lojban does make use of composition instead: lexical composition in lujvo, phrasal composition in tanru. The reasons usually given for the necessity of composition are practical in nature: to avoid tanru (and, in a lesser extent, lujvo), you should employ clumsy wordings, which would make sentences lengthy. My opinion is that a logical language should give up composition too entirely: tanru should not be an option, and function words (even very generic ones, with argument structures of the type x1 is relative to x2) should be used instead. As to adjective-like tanru (e.g. 'blanu drudi'), I think that the standard treatment in Montague semantics (something like 'x1 is a roof & x1 is blue') could work as well. Please do your remarks; I am an absolute beginner to lojban, and surely I miss something, or even the point. Giuliano Lancioni mc7926@mclink.it