Re: CONLANG: Resolution of compounded words

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

On Conlang:
>From: CTGNOLI@IMICILEA.CILEA.IT
>Subject: CONLANG: Resolution of compounded words
>
>John Cowan, while speaking about Loglan and Lojban:
>> Actually, there are two subgoals with different purposes:
>> to be able to divide utterances into words unambiguously, and to be
>> able to divide multi-morpheme words into morphemes unambiguously.
>
>Please can someone shortly explain how this latter works?

Lojban multi-morpheme compounds, called "lujvo" are composed of pieces,
called "rafsi" (affixes), and when warranted by the word-formation
rules, the letters "y", "r" and/or "n" as "word-glue".  The use of the
latter are completely prescribed:  you always can tell exactly which is
required, and you can always tell from the structure of the word whether
the occurence of those letters is word-glue.  You can also tell by the
structure of the word that it is indeed a lujvo and not a name,
borrowing, root word, or structure word.

Furthermore, for each of the root words in Lojban, there is a small and
specific set of rafsi uniquely assigned for use in making the compounds.
There is no duplication in the rafsi assignments; this means for
example, that the three-letter rafsi "bri" is assigned to "bridi" and to
no other root word, and "vla" is assigned to "valsi" and to no other
root word.  These are not the only rafsi assigned to bridi and valsi.
As a result, for example, "brivalsi", "bridyvalsi", and "bridyvla" are
alternate formulations of the word "brivla" and are essentially
considered alternate spellings/pronunciations of the same word - there
is by rule no permitted difference in meaning between "brivla" and the
other word-forms.

When a Lojbanist sees the lujvo "brivla", s/he knows that a) it is a
lujvo, b) that it breaks down into exactly two morphemes "bri" and
"vla", and c) that the latter morphemes represent particular root words
and thus strongly suggest the nature of the meaning of the compound
(though that meaning is not itself determined algorithmically).  He
knows that any of the word-forms that are made from the two words bridi
and valsi are equivalent, and hence can reconstruct the word from its
components if necessary (a lot of Lojbanists seem to memorize lujvo by
memorizing their components rather than the words themselves, since this
helps in recalling the meaning).

The result is thus similar to the English compound word "grandfather",
which breaks down into "grand" and "father" (though the compound does
not necessarily mean that the grandfather is particularly "grand").  But
English unlike Lojban does not have unique forms for the components, and
thus the word could be erroneously broken into 3 parts "grand-fat-her"
which would be incorrect as to morphology, etymology and implication of
meaning.

lojbab
----
lojbab                                                lojbab@access.digex.net
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA                        703-385-0273
For the artificial language Loglan/Lojban, see powered.cs.yale.edu  /pub/lojban
    or see Lojban WWW Server: href="http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/";