[lojban] Regular vs dictionary lujvo

["Cyril Slobin" <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

coi rodo

We all know that:
1) Tanru have many possible meanings and you must guess the right one
from context.
2) Lujvo have one meaning and you must to look up it from dictionary.

But in reality we have a class of a "regular" lujvo which meaning
anyone can guess. I will not bother to dig into the dictionary for a
lujvo starting with sel- or tol- or ending with -mau or -gau. And if a
dictionary will give a different meaning than I have guessed, I will
conclude that this dictionary is Bad, Wrong and Evil.

But there is a trap. Consider a lujvo "pofygau". Almost anyone will
understand it as "to break (agentive)", and this meaning is listed in
gimste. But someone in lojban_ru community noted that other possible
meaning is "to be a broken agent", "to be unable to cause something".
I believe that most of the sane lojbanists will prefer the first
meaning over the second. Why? Because the "something+gau" pattern is
much more recognizable than "pof+something". "-gau" is more affixish
than "pof-".

So, I conclude, it will be a Good Thing to have a list of common lujvo
patterns that need not be listed in dictionary, and to have a rule to
resolve conflicts when a given lujvo match two or more patterns.

For the second goal I suggest the following two rules:
1) Rafsi derived from cmavo is more affixish (has a higher priority)
than rafsi derived from gismu.
2) Unless the first rule gives an answer, rafsi at the end of lujvo is
more affixish (has a higher priority) than rafsi at te beginning of
lujvo.

Any comments?

... Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away ...

--
Cyril Slobin <lj user="slobin">


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