From - Wed Nov 13 16:13:00 1996 Reply-To: And Rosta Date: Wed Nov 13 16:13:00 1996 Sender: Lojban list From: And Rosta Organization: University of Central Lancashire Subject: Re: place switching cmavo... To: LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu X-UIDL: fcdd18a2656989547699a741a8ec8a7f Status: U X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1960 Message-ID: "Trevor C. Hill" pu cusku die: > I have an idea that i'd like to discuss regarding the 'se te ve xe' > cmavo... It seems to me that because the places are, for the most part, > ordered by frequency of use, these words should simply take a certain > place (x2 for se) and put it at the front, leaving the other places in > their original order... > > I'm interested in hearing people's thoughts on this... I've been thinking > about this quite a lot and it seems to me that this approach is really > better for practical use..... feel free to blast me if i'm wrong though I half agree. The bit I disagree with is that the function of SE should be altered. That would create great havoc - people have learnt the old SE and have written texts with it. But I agree that there is functional pressure in favour of cmavo that create the orders: x2 x3 x4 x5 x1 x3 x1 x2 x4 x5 x3 x4 x5 x1 x2 x4 x1 x2 x3 x5 x4 x5 x1 x2 x3 x5 x1 x2 x3 x4 - That is, I think there's a utilitatian justification for an extra 6 cmavo. All these orders can be created ny combinations of SE, but they are impossible to calculate amd one must simply work out all the combinations and memorize the useful ones. And even then it's likely one's reader will give up if they don't happen to have memorized the compound SE. We already have se x2 x1 x3 x4 x5 te x3 x2 x1 x4 x5 ve x4 x2 x3 x1 x5 xe x5 x2 x3 x4 x5 If the first sumti is marked with a FA you get the orders INITIAL FOLLOWING SUBSEQUENT FA-TAGGED UNTAGGED MUST BE TAGGED fe-x2 x3 x4 x5 ... fa-x1 fi-x3 x4 x5 ...... fa-x1, fe-x2 fo-x4 x5 ......... fa-x1, fe-x2, fi-x3 fu-x5 ............ fa-x1, f2-x2, fi-x3, fo-x4 So basically on the whole FA is useful only if you either wish to omit the first n sumti, or if you want to FA-tag every sumti. coo, mie and