[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: [lojban-beginners] Place structure vs. grammatical morphemes
On Sunday, October 14, 2012 5:18:23 PM UTC+4, mashers wrote:
On Sunday, 14 October 2012 12:22:20 UTC+1, gleki wrote:
I don't understand. If English "to" has multiple meanings then why should Lojban be polysemous just like English?
It absolutely shouldn't. One the most appealing features of Lojban to me is that each symbol has only one meaning. My point was not that a symbol should represent multiple meanings.
But if you want one morpheme for one meaning of English "to" this is how Lojban already works
But the morphemes aren't spoken, they are implied by the place structure. How does this work in practice if a novice has limited knowledge of the brivla place structures? And doesn't having to learn the place structure for each brivla add more learning load?
How can you learn Spanish/Japanese/whatever if you speak English?
The place structure of lojban is pretty clear. Even it's definition describe all places.
This is usually not the case in textbooks of other languages.
You have to figure out how prepositions/case-markers/whatever work in any language.
In the case of lojban there is dictionary and a textbook (only in English yet).
If I'm gonna learn another language, I will search for the same: a textbook and a dictionary.
There are also short forms of predicates. e.g. {seka'a} is kinda preposition that corresponds to the target of movement, roughly it's English "to". However, it's better to call such prepositions with a Lojbanic term "sumtcita" to avoid references to ambiguous western terms.
Ah yes I remember reading about the sumti tcita. Are they used in regular conversation?
Lojban is the most flexible language I've ever met. So I wanna use both sumtcita and brivla. They just look like different styles of Lojban.
And lastly, I suggest learning Lojban, become fluent in it. Then we can talk about such things in Lojban itself. :)
I'm working on it ;) Personally I find it useful to discuss new languages metalingusitically in order to understand their internal mechanisms.
Believe me (I'm not a fanatic of Lojban), if you learn Lojban then understanding the syntax of other languages will be much easier.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Lojban Beginners" group.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/lojban-beginners/-/gkfFbN4-z1YJ.
To post to this group, send email to lojban-beginners@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban-beginners+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban-beginners?hl=en.