Message-Id: <199511071505.KAA04462@locke.ccil.org>
Date:         Tue, 7 Nov 1995 06:26:38 -0500
Reply-To: Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Subject:      Re;  Good Clarifying Question
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
Status: OR

>The most important of these complicating factors is the process of
>learning Lojban.  Homophone affix ambiguity makes that process more
>difficult, primarily because of one glaring inconsistency:  some rafsi
>have the same meanings as their identical twin cmavo, whereas other rafsi
>do not.

Maybe when you actually have learned Lojban at the conversation level, this
argumentwould have some credibility coming from you.  But thus
far, in all
efforts by people to learn conversational Lojban around here, this has been
insignificant as a problem.  That is because  you generally have learned the
process of disambiguation long before you have learned the cmavo.

>At the same time, the process of learning Lojban makes disambiguation
>more difficult.  Typically, the learner would have a tendency to settle
>on the cmavo meaning, since the cmavo are easier to learn,

Funny, but no one, including myself, has EVER completed LogFlash learning of
the cmavo.  NOONE knows all the cmavo,(unless it is Cowan from having written

examples of most of them), and I dare say that no one knows most of them.
My experience is that I have learned the rafsi at about the same rate as
the cmavo.  But more impoertantly, I can disambiguate words into the
lujvo vs. cmavo category without knowing what they are in real time.  So
 I
KNOW which list to look up something I've heard in.  I can't recall ever
making a mistake and thinking that I have heard a compound cmavo rather than
a lujvo.  This is partly because lujvo aren't used that heavily in conversation
yet, but not entirely.  It is also because lujvo used in coversation are
generally more well known ones that you hear over and over again so that you
no longer think of them in terms of their componenets.  Rest assured that
I almost NEVER take "fu'ivla" apart and think of what "fu'i" means (and even
more rarely take "le'a" out of "le'avla").

Finally the frequency distribution of rafsi is quite different from that of
cmavo.  Neither "fu'i" or "le'a" is a common cmavo, so even if I wasn't
familiar with the lujvo, I am far more likely to think of the rafsi meaning
before the cmavo meaning.  Because I KNOW that cmavo aren't always
 the same in
meaning as rafsi, and indeed usually are not, it never occurs to me to try
to get some type of cmavo meaning out of "fu'i
or "le'a".

Similarly, the most common cmavo are unlikely to be heard as rafsi.  When
I hear "le,DU'u" in a  speech stream, the rules of stress automatically
tell me that this is two cmavo, and "du'u" is never taken as part of the
lujvo that might follow.  With the exception f ba
of "bau", I can't think of any
common cmavo which I have heard often in lujvo, and "bau" is one for which
there is no meaning ambiguity.

IN short, you are inventing aproblem that isn;t there in actual learning practiv
ce.

lojbab