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Re: [lojban] {kai'i}
At 03:18 AM 8/13/01 -0400, Invent Yourself wrote:
On Mon, 13 Aug 2001, Bob LeChevalier (lojbab) wrote:
> It is also VERY "Lojbanic" to allow ellipsis whenever possible. Ellipsis
> of ce'u is not really different from ellipsis of tense and number; it just
> happens to be one that is uniquely meaningful to Lojban.
What I am talking about is more like having a special form of le that
accepts only one brivla, eliminating the need to put ku after it.
It would thus have a different grammar from the rest of the sumti, actually
*increasing* the complexity in terms of most ways to measure it. All it
would save would be keystrokes.
> >It seems a lot more elegant to actually ditch ka,
> >with the exception of lujvo.
>
> We never attempted to design Lojban "elegantly". On the contrary, as a
> language workbench, we put a lot of expressive tools into the language
> which were of uncertain usability, with the expectation that some would be
> more useful than others and that this could differ based on one's native
> language.
Did you ever suspect ka would be rejected, and du'u ce'u used instead?
No. And indeed, ce'u was one of the last additions to the language before
baselining, such that John had relatively little to write about it in the
refgrammar. And ka hasn't been "rejected", except perhaps by a couple of
people who are participating in one discussion. I haven't been reading
that thread closely, still use ka, and am not sure I've ever used ce'u.
lojbab
--
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