Re: [lojban] y: what is it good for?

[Zefram <zefram@fysh.org>]

I'm following these grammar debates with considerable interest.  I've
studied programming language design a great deal, and so I'm finding
some of these design issues quite familiar.  I'm looking forward to
knowing Lojban well enough to make a thorough analysis of the grammar.

I think the cleanest way to handle "y" is to treat it as an erase word
that erases nothing.  This means that:

* it is not necessary to explicitly erase a pause: "le y si lo broda"
  preprocesses to "lo broda"

* it can be quoted with "zo"; if you want to pause before a quoted
  word, develop the habit of pausing *before* the "zo", as in "y y y
  zo nalselmorjyvalsi"

* it can be used as a "zoi" delimiter (though I think the ability to use
  erase words here is bad design; I'd prefer "zoi si zo" to preprocess to
  "zo")

* more generally, it's not a special case, making learning easier

How does this interact with "bu" and "zei"?  Is "si bu" valid?  If not
then "ybu" might have to be an exception to the above.

Incidentally, why was this "bu" system devised?  Why not use, for example,
"a'y" to "u'y" for the vowels?

-zefram