[lojban-beginners] Re: Distinguishing Type 3 and 4 fu'ivla

["H. Felton" <fagricipni@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 9:07 PM, Minimiscience<minimiscience@gmail.com> wrote:
> de'i li 24 pi'e 08 pi'e 2009 la'o fy. H. Felton .fy. cusku zoi skamyxatra.
> Why would {fu'ivla} be split into two separate types?  The division between
> types 3 and 4 is a convention, and discriminating between them is only relevant
> for semantic purposes, not morphological (i.e., identifying a type 3 {fu'ivla}
> lets you determine the general concept it describes).  Also, your {vlalei} list
> omits {cmene}/{cmevla}.

Yea, I forgot to mention cmevla.

I'd call the program that I am thinking of working on after I get my
memorization program working a sort of "training wheels" for Lojban:
aside from uncompressing run-together words, it will also be designed
to split lujvo in to rafsi and hyphens, and for possible Type 3
fu'ivla picking off the rafsi and hyphen when asked.

Let me give a sample interaction (user input prefixed by ?):

?wordclass("lenubecybai")
Multiple Word
?wordsplit("lenubecybai")
le nu becybai
?wordclass("becybai")
lujvo
?lujvosplit("becybai")
bec -y- bai
?selrafsi("bai")
bapli
?selrafsi("bec")
Error: no such rafsi
?wordclass("cidjrspageti")
Possible Type 3 fu'ivla
?category("cidjrspageti")
cidj -r- spageti
?selrafsi("cidj")
cidja
?selrafsi("sel")
se

Hopefully, by the time I get the second program working, I wouldn't
have to look up "cidj" or "sel", but I might still have to look up
some of the 3-letter rafsi, until I can fully use Lojban.  _My_
intention is to use this program as a way of helping me "disassemble"
run-together word and things built from rafsi at first, and later as I
become more experienced in Lojban, I'll need the program less and less.
Notice, I will deliberately leave out English word look-up; I consider
knowing the meaning of the gismu and cmavo too important to automate.
Of course, once I get my program written and post it up somewhere,
others can modify it to do whatever they want.

This is getting a bit far from Lojban-Beginners, but I wanted to
explain the utility of distinguishing (possible) Type 3 and Type 4
fu'ivla.  Since there is no way to be sure that a possible Type 3
is not actually a Type 4, splitting apart the rafsi, hyphen, and rest
of the word only suggests a possible meaning.  This is not actually a
problem for me: on another non-Lojban group I use the username
"fagricipni"; some people found that that name was hard to remember,
and one person noted that it most easily shortened to "fag".  In order
to spare people on that group the awkwardness of calling me "fag";
I suggested they use the syllable "cip", I did note that this was
actually the rafsi for "cipra" meaning "test", but that I had met
quite a number of people named Crystal and none of them were very
crystalline.  The actual rafsi for "cipni", "cpi", does not occur as a
sequence of letters in "fagricipni", so I decided that it was better
to allow my nickname to be "cip" rather than "cpi".  Also I thought
that "cip" was likely to be easier for more people to pronounce,
plus there's the bi-lingual pun that "cip" sounds like the English
word "sheep", which is the last thing someone who knows me would
call me.  Actually, I just realized that I _couldn't_ use "cpi" as a
cmeme in Lojban anyway.  It would matter though; even if it had been
possible to use "cpi" as a cmeme in Lojban, I'd just tell Lojbanists
that asked about my nickname "cip" that, no, it doesn't derive from
the rafsi for "cipra", but from an abbreviation of my full Lojban
name "fagri cipni", and that in the context that the nickname was
chosen "cip" seemed a better choice than "cpi".  (Yes, I know that
in Lojban, I must separate the words, but choosing usernames on
systems, I don't use spaces.)

Are you bored to tears, yet? :^)

>> this also means that the program will identify "becrbai" as a lujvo (assuming
>> I haven't make a mistake in generating a lujvo from those two rafsi)
>
> You did make a mistake; that 'r' should be a 'y'.  'R' is only allowed as a
> hyphen in {lujvo} when the first {rafsi} is CVV and either the {tanru} contains
> more than two words or the second {rafsi} is not CCV.
>
> mu'omi'e .kamymecraijun.

I'm trying to re-learn the knowledge that I had when I had studied
Lojban for about a year, but I didn't get to an advanced level, and
that's been about 5 years ago.

mu'o mi'e fagri cipni