[lojban-beginners] Re: I'm... My name's...

["Turniansky, Michael [UNK]" <MICHAEL.A.TURNIANSKY@saic.com>]

  Periods in lojban much the same purpose as punctuation in any other
language --  They convey non-semantic nuances.  Would you tell someone
learning English that they should no longer have commas, semicolons,
dashes, hyphens, question marks, exclmation points, etc., etc., etc.,
(or for that matter capital letters?) since a period could convey any
important information?  (Or: "Would you tell someone learning english
that they should no longer have commas semicolons dashes hyphens
question marks exclamation points etc etc etc or for that matter capital
letters since a period could convey any importnat information.")  Just
like a comma in English tells a person where to pause, a question mark
indicates a rising intonation and longer pause, and captial letters mark
off proper nouns, but convey absolutely zero information on how to say
the given word, so too a perios in lojban conveys: "pause".  If you
don't use spaces in your lojban, you must use periods whereappropirate
(leblabi.gerku.nemicuklama.lezarci), but if you use spaces you don't
need them.  However (and again, I harken back to the Hebrew), they are
the MOST useful for a beginner, so that they  understand where pauses
must come in speech.  Look for example, at the first picture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niqqud .  The parts in red are vowel signs.
The parts in blue are the traditional musical notes for reading the
phrase from a Torah scroll.  Neither appear in the torah scroll itself.
So how do you know the first word is pronounced (using lojban
orthography) as "vai,iomer" and not "vi,amar", "voi,emur", "vei,ia,umir"
etc. etc. which are all theoretically possible pronunciations?  You know
because of the grammar of Hebrew.  But when you are LEARNING it, you
need to have those vowel signs, so you can speak it properly.
Similarly, while the periods aren't necessarily necessary to write in
lojban, because the grammar forces the pause to be there when you speak
it, they are good as learning tools.  So all beginning level lojban
texts should have them.  Casual texts and texts for advanaced readers
don't need them, although they may  show up (especially in the word ".i"
which has a nice isographic correspondence with ithe Indo-European
period/full stop.)

                  --gejyspa


-----Original Message-----
From: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org
[mailto:lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org] On Behalf Of
m.kornig@sondal.net
Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2007 2:27 AM
To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org
Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: I'm... My name's...

Selon "Turniansky, Michael \\[UNK\\]" <MICHAEL.A.TURNIANSKY@saic.com>:

>   Periods are _always_ optional to WRITE,

If this is true then maybe you don't need
periods at all? Then why not cancel the
peiod from the Lojban alphabet?

This would have the following advantages:

(1) The alphabet would be simpler (and easier
    to learn).
(2) Lojban texts in general would become a
    bit shorter.
(3) Learners would not be confused about the
    presence or absence of periods any more.

Martin