From jay.kominek@colorado.edu Tue Nov 13 17:58:01 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: kominek@ucsub.colorado.edu X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_0_1); 14 Nov 2001 01:58:00 -0000 Received: (qmail 82594 invoked from network); 14 Nov 2001 01:58:00 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.171) by m4.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 14 Nov 2001 01:58:00 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO ucsub.colorado.edu) (128.138.129.12) by mta3.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 14 Nov 2001 01:58:00 -0000 Received: from ucsub.colorado.edu (kominek@ucsub.colorado.edu [128.138.129.12]) by ucsub.colorado.edu (8.11.6/8.11.2/ITS-5.0/student) with ESMTP id fAE1vx701641 for ; Tue, 13 Nov 2001 18:57:59 -0700 (MST) Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 18:57:59 -0700 (MST) To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: RE: [lojban] Why is there so much irregularity in cmavo/gismu? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE From: Jay Kominek X-Yahoo-Profile: jfkominek X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 12111 On Tue, 13 Nov 2001, Craig wrote: > An explanation of why xu and .ui are different grammatically. Er, but they're identical grammatically! Really! I swear! > Consider a hypothetical person - we'll call him Jimbob, a good generic > lojbanist name - who comes to me to ask about lojban. First he asks how t= o > say "I go." I tell him you say "mi klama," not wanting to get into SE and= FA > yet. But, lover of attitudinals that I am, I mention that you show your > feelings with a word that you can put anywhere in the sentence. For > instance, "I go :-)" is "mi klama .ui" He asks how to make commands. I te= ll > him you use a different form of the word for 'you'. He asks how to ask > yes/no questions. I say you stick 'xu' anywhere in the sentence. > So Jimbob goes off and reads the Codex Woldemar. He then asks why I didn'= t > tell him that the emotions and questions were the same. And then you froth at the mouth, spray spittle, scream "NO COOKIE FOR YOU!" and explain to them that being grammatically identical does, in no way, imply that they are semantically identical. Maybe if we took your cookie away, you'd pay more attention when we tell you that "grammatically identical" !=3D "semantically identical"? :) > I explain to him > that in English, we say 'ick' to express displeasure, and we rephrase the > sentence to ask a question. "In Lojban," I say, "the two can occupy the s= ame > grammatical space. But 'How do I ask a question' and 'how do I express > displeasure' are still very different questions, linguistically. It doesn= 't > matter that the answer is the same, because it doesn't have to be. That i= n > Lojban it is, makes no difference as to what the questions ask." And then= , > Jimbob achieves enlightenment. Maybe this is the deep part of your koan, because I don't grok it. The answers to the questions "How do I ask a question?" and "How do I express displeasure?" are different. One is "xu" and the other is ".oi". Why is it such a big deal that they can be placed into sentences using the same rules, and that we give a name to every set of cmavo which follows the same grammar rules? Do you want us to change "xu" and ".ui" so that they follow different grammatical rules? Do you want them placed in catagories with different, but identical names? Do you want the name of the se cmavo "UI" changed to "FOBWART"? I'm still not getting what you want, just that you're complaining about something. :( - Jay Kominek Plus =C3=A7a change, plus c'est la m=C3=AAme chose