From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Thu Jan 01 22:07:41 2009 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Thu, 01 Jan 2009 22:07:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1LIdC9-0000AD-KI for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Thu, 01 Jan 2009 22:07:41 -0800 Received: from cdptpa-omtalb.mail.rr.com ([75.180.132.122]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1LIdC5-00008a-GP for lojban-list@lojban.org; Thu, 01 Jan 2009 22:07:41 -0800 Received: from chausie ([71.75.215.96]) by cdptpa-omta01.mail.rr.com with ESMTP id <20090102060728.IUPH17716.cdptpa-omta01.mail.rr.com@chausie> for ; Fri, 2 Jan 2009 06:07:28 +0000 Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by chausie (Postfix) with ESMTP id BFB8119F1 for ; Fri, 2 Jan 2009 01:07:26 -0500 (EST) From: Pierre Abbat To: lojban-list@lojban.org Subject: [lojban] Re: What do we call roots in other languages? Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2009 01:07:23 -0500 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.6 References: <200810051859.21304.phma@phma.optus.nu> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-15" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200901020107.24158.phma@phma.optus.nu> X-Spam-Score: 0.0 X-Spam-Score-Int: 0 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 15193 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: phma@phma.optus.nu Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list On Monday 06 October 2008 16:01:21 Daniel Brockman wrote: > I agree it makes sense to consider -nun- and -tol- derivational affixes, > but wouldn't {cadgau} be a compound of two roots, rather than a root? Yes it is two roots. I've been thinking about roots and {gismu}, and there does seem to be some sense in calling natlang roots {gismu}. Take the Indo-European root for instance. It consists generally of some consonants, none of which are the same, and a vowel "e" somewhere among the consonants. The e-grade, o-grade, and zero-grade forms could be said to be its rafsi. Its relation and argument roles are those of the simplest verb formed from the root, if any; if it's a noun or adjective, there is one argument role. Lojban has a sharp distinction between the native roots, which can form compounds by running together their rafsi as long as the phonotactics allow, and borrowed roots, which have to be separated at least by "y" from adjacent morphemes (or "'" for those that begin with a vowel) (if the general rafsi fu'ivla proposals are accepted) and otherwise by {zei}. But they are both roots, as far as linguistic terminology goes. So what can we call something that's either a gismu or a fu'ivla, but is not a lujvo, and may be in a language other than Lojban? Pierre To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.