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[lojban] Re: ki'a
Arnt Richard Johansen wrote:
On Mon, 20 Nov 2006, Bob LeChevalier wrote:
Perhaps, those who are coining them may like them (until caught by a
slinku'i error), but those reading them and not familiar with them are
probably more likely to appreciate Type IIIs.
I personally find type IVs MUCH more aesthetically pleasing than type
IIIs. I usually only use type IIIs if there is a word-shape constraint
(such as with samcrkasava), or when coining nonce fu'ivla on the fly.
So far as I know, almost all Lojban usage is "on the fly". The
exception might be a major translation project like Alice.
Ideally, one shouldn't have to use a dictionary for casual reading, so
any usage that EXPECTS someone to use a dictionary is inherently
demanding, and therefore offputting to those who are casual readers of
the list. I guess that if someone wants to limit their audience, using
lots of Type IV fu'ivla is like using a lot of jargon, quite effective
at shutting out those who don't want to look up every word in a dictionary.
fu'ivla remain BY POLICY, substandard Lojban, since this encourages
the preferred kind of word building using lujvo. Having fu'ivla be
aesthetically unpleasing to some people is supportive of this policy.
If so, this policy is in IMHO very poorly advertised.
The CLL says:
# The intention is that (except in certain semantically broad but
shallow # fields such as cultures, nations, foods, plants, and animals)
suitable # lujvo can be devised to cover the ten million or so concepts
expressible # in all the world's languages taken together.
That rather strongly implies that fu'ivla are a secondary choice when
lujvo cannot be made. I can imagine someone interpreting it to mean
that in those 5 semantic categories (only), fu'ivla are *intended* to be
used (in preference to lujvo), but I am sure that the intent is to
*recognize* that in those five areas, the number of discrete concepts
may be so high that lujvo needed to distinguish relatively common
concepts might be unZipfeanly long as well as obtuse (labeling all the
varieties of Italian pasta for a cookbook translation using lujvo might
be a bit too much).
Actually it says something akin to this Zipfean consideration on p61 -
it identifies these areas as being places where words are akin to "names
for concepts" which are therefore being imported like names are
Lojbanized. "The vast majority of words [in these areas] cannot be
easily expressed as tanru".
And if we are relying on CLL as the standard, it says (p62)
"Stage 4 fu'ivla require running tests that are not simple to
characterize or perform, and should be made only after deliberation and
by someone knowledgeable about all the considerations that apply".
That CLL focuses on explaining and exemplifying the construction of Type
III fu'ivla and does NOT spend as much time on Type IV words should
support this interpretation that making such words is not supposed to be
an everyday occurrence. (I had envisioned a committee, perhaps
something akin to byfy, deciding when words had been used enough to
warrant being made into Type IVs, but in 1997 it wasn't foreseen that
defining a mechanism was necessary except for culture words).
In the section on rafsi fu'ivla p80, CLL explicitly noted the
disparagement of fu'ivla in the incipient Lojban culture, referring to
whether culture words "deserve a gismu" or "must languish in fu'ivla
space". The rafsi fu'ivla proposal thus recognizes that particular
wordspace and those particular kinds of words, as being unlike the
typical fu'ivla. Even there, however, early usage tended to use Type
III fu'ivla.
This is exactly the way that stage-IV lujvo are being used today. I am
hard pressed to find *any* fu'ivla among the about two hundred currently
in Jbovlaste that do not fit any of the above categories.
That's good. But I still think it is premature to be making them,
especially when Lojbanists look at them and have no clue what they refer to.
lojbab
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