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Re: [lojban] Re: zo xruti xruti



At 02:22 AM 8/18/02 +0200, Adam Raizen wrote:
I understand the historical development, but the current definition of
fatne is "x1 [sequence] is in reverse order from x2 [sequence]; x1
(object) is inverted from x2 (object)", and I don't see how that can
include reverting or returning.

If you reverse the order of a process, where do you end up other than where you started?

For one thing, it doesn't contain a
place for the state/property that is returned to. If someone says 'mi
fatne', does that mean that they're standing on their head, or that
they've returned?

You can't fatne, although tu'a do (as a process) could be understood as a sequence. But we are talking about fatne as the modifier of a lujvo tanru, and there is (or should be) a LOT of latitude in tanru (per the red book, which lists a large variety of acceptable tanru modes that seldom seem to get used).

> >  (I concede that 'zilpavyxru' would have the necessary
> >meaning, but it is unnecessarily long and complicated.)
>
> Why not just zilxru?  The pa seems to be the logical default for a
deleted
> place, since you can get the others with SE rather than numbering.

I would think that 'zil' by itself would work like 'don' and other
KOhA cmavo with rafsi, in that it would fill up one of the places
greater than x1 with the sumti in question. It would be strange to
interpret 'donta'a' as 'You talk to x1 about x2', rather than 'x1
talks to you about x2'. But in general I would like to avoid using
'zi'o' at all for anything; it is too clumsy.

I agree.

> Adding new gismu is an even bigger change to the baseline.

Well, I'm not sure that it's bigger; at least it doesn't invalidate
anyone's usage or require that anyone relearn anything, which seems to
be historically the reason for the baseline in the first place.

That is half the reason. The other half is to get people out of the mode of solving problems by "yet another language modification". In the time before the gismu baseline, we averaged 1-2 new gismu proposals per month, all of which had to be decided. After the baseline, we have had only a couple in 8 years.

At any
rate, this doesn't have to be a baseline change. A new gismu could
easily come into use without being on the official lists, and it
should be much easier to get people to use it, since it doesn't
contradict anything official.

I won't comment, since my position on unofficial words is the obvious official one. %^)

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