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

[Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu>]

On Monday 24 August 2009 17:56:15 H. Felton wrote:
> Is there a way to always distinguish between Type 3 and Type 4
> fu'ivla?  "cidjrspageti" is a Type 3 fu'ivla based on Lojbanizing
> "spaghetti" to "spageti", and then attaching "cidj-" from the rafsi
> for "cidja" for "food" and an r-hyphen.  However, upon first
> encountering that word in text could it not also be a Type 3 fu'ivla
> based on a longer natural language word?

If it looks like a type-3 fu'ivla, it is a type-3 fu'ivla. Once I was figuring 
out what a turndun could be called in Lojban. I tried "turndunu", but that is 
a type-3 with rafsi "tur", thus some kind of structure, not a noisemaker. I 
decided on "turdunu" instead.

If it could be a type-3 with 3-letter rafsi and a type-3 with 4-letter rafsi, 
it is a type-3 with 4-letter rafsi. Were it not so, some combinations of 
gismu and borrowed part would be impossible. So a "curnlibi" is a libi worm, 
and so is a "curnrlibi"; it's not a rlibi worm. (I just made that up.)

One corner case is a rafsi ending in "r" followed by a foreign part 
beginning "tc", "ts", "dj", or "dz". For example, "lerndjamo" is invalid, so 
it has to be "lerldjamo", which is therefore a type-3, not a type-4. (It 
means an individual letter in the Korean alphabet.)

None of this, though, affects whether a word is a valid fu'ivla.

Pierre