Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 10:29:55 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199802021529.KAA02607@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: And Rosta Sender: Lojban list From: And Rosta Organization: University of Central Lancashire Subject: Re: Classes of cmavo X-To: LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-UIDL: 229862078a10c90905e9a9fcb6c25db8 X-Mozilla-Status: 8013 X-From-Space-Date: Mon Feb 02 14:43:50 1998 X-From-Space-Address: - Colin: > What is interesting about this classification, is that I have found it > quite hard to find a grammatical characterisation of selsmuma'o that > excludes brivla! It seems to me that, while cuvma'o are clearly a > different kind of animal from selsmuma'o and brivla, on both structural > and semantic grounds it is difficult to distinguish the class of brivla > from any other selma'o - except that it happens to be much larger. Aren't {du}, {co`e}, {go`i} both cmavo *and* brivla? Or do brivla exclude selbri valsi that are cmavo? Either way, I think the essence is that cmavo form a closed class, while cmevla, lujvo and fu`ivla are open classes. The cmavo/nae`e cmavo distinction is more a lexical one than a syntactic one. Interestingly, gismu and rafsi also form a closed class, though, so the difference between gismu and cmavo must be purely or primarily a syntactic one. --And