From lojban@cuvmb.bitnet Fri Oct 04 22:11:16 1996 Received: from punt-4.mail.demon.net by stryx.demon.co.uk with SMTP id AA15922 ; Fri, 04 Oct 96 22:11:14 BST Received: from punt-4.mail.demon.net by mailstore for ia@stryx.demon.co.uk id 844439434:14288:1; Fri, 04 Oct 96 15:30:34 BST Received: from cunyvm.cuny.edu ([128.228.1.2]) by punt-4.mail.demon.net id aa13203; 4 Oct 96 15:29 BST Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R3) with BSMTP id 2906; Fri, 04 Oct 96 10:28:48 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 7149; Fri, 04 Oct 96 10:28:34 EDT Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1996 16:23:11 +0200 Reply-To: "R.M. Uittenbogaard" Sender: Lojban list From: "R.M. Uittenbogaard" Subject: lujvo morphology To: Multiple recipients of list LOJBAN Message-ID: <844439398.13203.0@cunyvm.cuny.edu> Status: R Hello, It is only two months or so since I first read about Lojban on the net, and I read it with great interest. I was amazed to see that it is possible to create a language which is so unlike any natural language. But there is one aspect to Lojban that I find far from elegant, and that aspect is the lujvo morphology. There are two major problems which can be encountered when creating lujvo: first, unpermissible consonant clusters may arise (which can be prevented by inserting an -y- hyphen), and second, care must be taken that the lujvo does not fall apart (e.g. in a cmavo and another brivla). Now it seems to me that, despite precautions, there are several lujvo which will still fall apart: in one of the ckafybarja texts found on an ftp site, the word "mlitoinandu" appears. I wondered how a Lojban-speaker would know that this is intended to be one single lujvo: since the stressed syllable is the penultimate one, I would expect this word to fall apart into "mlitoi nandu" which is a tanru and so might have a distinct meaning from the meaning intended. Actually, I would find it a much better solution if all the vowel-final rafsi were abandoned altogether. This can be done by eliminating all the rafsi for gismu, and only assign CVC type rafsi, and only to cmavo. The only rafsi which may be used for gismu are the gismu itself, and the gismu with its final vowel deleted. Of course, this implies that more -y- hyphens would become necessary, which make longer words. But I think that would not be a great disadvantage: long words like "dormochambro" and "konservoskatolo" are common in Esperanto. The advantages of decreasing the number of rafsi would be several: most importantly, Lojban-learners would not have to learn all the rafsi which correspond to the gismu. The lujvo would become far easier to recognize. Furthermore, no -r- or -n- hyphens are necessary because all the rafsi end in a consonant, and the lujvo will never break apart anymore; sometimes, however, an -y- hyphen is still needed. And the formation of lujvo would become much easier. Probably, the lujvo morphology rules are all settled and fixed at this stage in development, and my opinion will not make much of a change. But I still think this is a minor unelegant point about Lojban, which I would have dealt with differently. Greetings, Rene Uittenbogaard