[lojban-beginners] Re: Preliminary chapter 1 for Lojban learners

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 9:59 AM, Michael Turniansky
<mturniansky@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/3/18 Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
>> You won't be pronouncing a different word if
>> you choose a different stress than the one proposed for you.
>
>  Says who?

The grammar. There is a very simple test to check whether two things
count as instances of the same word or not: Is "zoi PORtugal whatever
portuGAL cu fange selsku" a valid sentence? The two delimiters for ZOI
have to be the same word.

> Unlike cmavo, stress may in fact be the only difference
> in cmevla  between two differently named things.

But that's no relevant difference. Similarly you could use two
different versions of "r" for the same name to try to convey that they
refer to different people, but according to the rules of Lojban they
will still be the same word.

> If I have one friend
> named BArux, and another name baRUX, I can distinguish them in speech
> by use of stress, and I can distinguish them in writing by use of
> capitals.

You could, and you may even get your point across, but someone else
might choose to use a different stress and they would be pronouncing
the same word.

> And if I don't choose to use the capitals, then the refgram
> says it's the former, not the latter, that I must be talking about.
> (Chapter 4, section 8: "Names may have almost any form, but always end
> in a consonant, and are followed by a pause. They are penultimately
> stressed, unless unusual stress is marked with capitalization.")

Yes, penultimate stress is the usual rule for cmavo too. That doesn't
mean that changing the stress changes the word.

mu'o mi'e xorxes