[lojban] Re: Regular vs dictionary lujvo

["Adam D. Lopresto" <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

There is a very long (but informative) paper on this at
http://www.lojban.org/files/papers/lujvopap.3

It details the gasnu-based pattern, in particular.  

On Thu, 4 Jan 2007, Cyril Slobin wrote:

> 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 ...
> 
> 

-- 
Adam Lopresto
http://cec.wustl.edu/~adam/

You see things and say 'Why?'; but I dream things that never were and I
say 'Why not?'

--George Bernard Shaw


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