At 11:19 PM 07/13/2001 -0500, Michal Wallace wrote:
I'm looking at the gismu list, and notice two columns of codes right after the english definitions and before the cross references. What do these mean?
Excellent question! (maybe add it to the FAQ in the brochure book, Nick?)The number and letter code refer to the original outline for the Lojban textbook (that outline is attached to this message in RTF format, and will be added to the historical file archive on the website when next I update it). The current draft has the lessons broken differently so that the codes are less meaningful, though they still roughly track with the order of presentation in the textbook, up to what used to be lesson 6.
The first one almost looks like some sort of grouping: blanu, xunre, narju all share the code 1a..
The groupings in the lesson did color words all at once in the first part of the first lesson, since one can make lots of simple sentences using those words.
The second one.. I thought I heard something about word frequency?
Yes. It is a word frequency count on all Lojban text, Lojban List text, and teaching materials through sometime in 1992, so as to give another plausible order to study the words other than the textbook order, one which presumably would support following Lojban List discussions. Lojban grammar terminology was very highly represented because that was much of what people talked about on Lojban List. The web site has current frequency lists, and the grammar terms are still the most used, but I haven't changed the numbers in the gismu list.
I just wrote a little program to sort the list by that number..
The top comes out like:
('cusku', 'express ', '1h ', '872')
('tanru', 'phrase compoun', '1b ', '776')
('prenu', 'person ', '1k ', '632')
('gismu', 'root word ', '1b ', '554')
('djica', 'desire ', '3l ', '500')
('lujvo', 'affix compound', '1b ', '428')
('diklo', 'local ', '5d ', '426')
('klama', 'come ', '1g1', '399')
('bacru', 'utter ', '1h ', '386')
('djuno', 'know ', '1h ', '375')
('sumti', 'argument ', '1b2', '373')
('drata', 'other ', '2g ', '351')
('kumfa', 'room ', '2k ', '346')
('tavla', 'talk ', '1h ', '338')
('nanmu', 'man ', '1k ', '332')
('cmalu', 'small ', '1e ', '326')
('citka', 'eat ', '5c ', '320')
('barda', 'big ', '1e ', '318')
I find it hard to believe tanru is a more common word than citka or
barda,
How often do people talk about eating or the size of things online? But they do talk about Lojban grammar.
but these do seem to be "simple" lojban words.. But then again,
the other end came out like:
('gluta', 'glove ', 'ao ', ' 0')
('pambe', 'pump ', 'a ', ' 0')
('kanji', 'calculate ', '7e ', ' 0')
('barja', 'bar ', 'ap ', ' 0')
('sigja', 'cigar ', 'a ', ' 0')
('xatsi', '1E-18 ', 'ae ', ' 0')
('petso', '1E15 ', 'ae ', ' 0')
('fanri', 'factory ', '8c ', ' 0')
('barna', 'mark ', 'a ', ' 0')
('tsina', 'stage ', '5g ', ' 0')
Which definitely seem less common (or more culture-specific).
And indeed the words with no lesson number not only were in no teaching material, but a couple dozen of them were made after the frequency count was done.
lojbab
Attachment:
NEWOUT2.rtf
Description: RTF file
-- lojbab lojbab@lojban.org Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org