[lojban-beginners] Dots and spaces (was: Logical connectives)

["Karl Naylor" <karl.org@gmail.com>]

On 17/06/07, m.kornig@sondal.net <m.kornig@sondal.net> wrote:

> > (1) la alis e la djan pinxe loi tcati a loi ckafi
> Hi Daniel. I don't know about your logical problem but
> I think you need points: at the end of names, e.g.
> {alis.} and {djan.}, and at the beginning of connectives,
> e.g. {.a}, {.e} and {.i}.

I've noticed several experienced Lojbanists omit all dots, which
doesn't seem to be discussed in the Reference Grammar or the
beginners' course, but makes sense since the reader knows where they
need to go anyway.  As long as there are spaces before any word with
an initial vowel and after all cmevla (I think), it's unambiguous.
For beginners it may help to see the dots as a reminder that a pause
is needed.

This raises a point I've been interested by for a while, though: I've
don't remember seeing any discussion at all in the RG or LFB of
spaces.  As I recall it's just assumed that spaces go between words in
written Lojban, except where you don't need them.  It seems to me
there's room for a more thorough treatment.  After all, Lojban has at
least three mechanisms for signalling to the reader/listener where
word boundaries lie: stress rules, spacing and dots.  Stress in spoken
Lojban I believe is fully explained, but its written equivalent is
left for the Lojbanist to figure out.  This leads to some puzzlement
on the beginners' list as new Lojbanists begin interacting with the
more experienced and wonder why some people drop spaces, some drop
dots, some use explicit stress (via capitalisation) for all words,
etc.

Has this issue been discussed before my time, I wonder?  Is there any
motion to insert discussion of spacing into the RG, or has it been
determined that this is unnecessary?