In a message dated 9/18/2001 11:48:37 AM Central Daylight Time, arosta@uclan.ac.uk writes:
You took early retirement with a pay increase?! Me green green Don't be. More than what I got working at UMSL, less than anyone else I know gets working or retired (well, not quite, I suppose -- some of those below me in the old list must still be below me, but I don't know them by name or face). <On my claim about Lojban being unspelled out, it clearly is many many times better spelled out than any other invented language has ever been, but a grammar is a rule system that defines sentences as form--meaning pairings and I do believe that it is therefore massively incomplete, even setting aside the gismu and lujvo. For example, try going through the mahoste and identifying those cmavo whose meaning is both clear and uncontroversial -- there are very very few. > I would probably find more than you (except, of course, that they then become controversial), but, yes, the gismu list gives boundaries and we have to fill in the center (remember {botpi}?) as much as need be (and so more as time goes along). this does not seem to me to be incompletion and does seem to be where usage decides things. And where prior official definitions handed down would have been a disaster. I am much less sure about cmavo, which I think are pretty clear by and large (though I obviously don't agree with everyone's ideas -- but then, I just think they are wrong) and have to be. They are part of the bones, cmavo are flesh and ornamentation. We learn things about cmavo but not, generally, what they mean. |