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Re: [lojban] zipf computations & experimental cmavo



At 04:12 PM 9/26/01 -0400, Rob Speer wrote:
On Wed, Sep 26, 2001 at 03:27:28PM -0400, John Cowan wrote:
> And Rosta wrote:
> > My sense is that binding-to-broda would not be an adequate substitute
> > for these abbreviatory methods, but as long as the binder is asymmetric
> > (what is the binder? goi? -- I certainly insist that goi should be asymmetric),
> > the long form could be bound to any valid brivla form, which I do feel
> > would be satisfactory.
>
> It's cei, which is the pro-bridi analogue of goi, and subject to the
> same asymmetry rules.

So which way should they go?

I agree that a 'goi' which is symmetric is broken. Here's the problem which
probably inspired whoever it was to make it symmetric - to use 'goi' after a
complex phrase, you need to use a bunch of terminators, whereas it would go
before just fine. However, such an assignment tends to be an afterthought. So
both directions of assignment are important.

(For those who don't see the problem with symmetry: names are assignable.
Pro-sumti are assignable. What gets assigned if you say {la djan. goi ko'a}?)

The original thought was that one of the two (and not the other) would always refer to a specific which is otherwise identified, and one would refer to an as yet unassigned variable.

Could bi'u/bi'unai be used to resolve this in the event (which I still can't fathom) that one would use goi with something other than this case?

I suppose experimental cmavo would be necessary to get it both ways, since I
see no way to attach a cmavo which switches the direction of assignment to
'goi' without changing the grammar. {segoi} would be nice, but doesn't parse.

Personally, I suspect one could resolve a lot of these problems by going metalinguistic with a sei bridi, and some simply by creatively using noi/poi with an appropriate brivla.

lojbab
--
lojbab                                             lojbab@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
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Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:                 http://www.lojban.org