Date: Sun, 1 Feb 1998 19:41:04 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199802020041.TAA09197@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Colin Fine Sender: Lojban list From: Colin Fine Subject: Classes of cmavo X-To: Lojban list To: John Cowan X-UIDL: e55e0be9a2b0d6cd8a62695d76373be6 Status: O X-Mozilla-Status: 8001 X-From-Space-Date: Mon Feb 02 14:40:43 1998 X-From-Space-Address: - I've been trying to define some lojban grammatical terms in Lojban, which is throwing up some very interesting questions (eg how can you talk about what 'bridi' means without using 'bridi'). But a more general question occurred to me. The definition of 'cmavo' is cmavo ma'o structure word x1 is a structure word of grammatical class x2, with meaning/function x3 in usage (language) x4 In Lojban, cmavo are clearly distinguished by morphology from other word-classes; but the definition has (not unreasonably) been extended with an x4 place. So what might cmavo be in other languages? At first sight it is pretty obvious - the cmavo of English are pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions ... - but then it gets a bit harder. Adverbs? Some. Auxiliaries and so on. What I want to talk about is not actually what the cmavo are in another language, but the fact that there seem to me to be two distinct classes of cmavo in Lojban (but probably not in rarbau). Zu'u there are what I choose to call cuvma'o (pure cmavo) which have no intrinsic meaning, and are required (but often elidable) purely to make the syntax work - ku, gi, cu, co, be are examples. Their selma'o are singletons (because if there were more than one cmavo in the selma'o, the choice would be semantic). Zu'unai there are the selsmuma'o (meaning cmavo) which as well as expressing structure also have meaning of their own - noticeable from the fact that, unlike the cuvma'o, they are usually in selma'o of several cmavo, that are grammatically interchangeable. 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. pe'ipei mi'e kolin -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- | Colin Fine 66 High Ash, Shipley, W Yorks. BD18 1NE, UK | | Tel: 01274 592696/0976 635354 e-mail: colin@kindness.demon.co.uk | | "Don't just do something! Stand there!" | | - from 'Behold the Spirit' (workshop) | -----------------------------------------------------------------------