RE: [lojban] Why is there so much irregularity in cmavo/gismu?

[Jay Kominek <jay.kominek@colorado.edu>]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2001, Craig wrote:

> An explanation of why xu and .ui are different grammatically.

Er, but they're identical grammatically! Really! I swear!

> Consider a hypothetical person - we'll call him Jimbob, a good generic
> lojbanist name - who comes to me to ask about lojban. First he asks how to
> say "I go." I tell him you say "mi klama," not wanting to get into SE and FA
> yet. But, lover of attitudinals that I am, I mention that you show your
> feelings with a word that you can put anywhere in the sentence. For
> instance, "I go :-)" is "mi klama .ui" He asks how to make commands. I tell
> him you use a different form of the word for 'you'. He asks how to ask
> yes/no questions. I say you stick 'xu' anywhere in the sentence.
> So Jimbob goes off and reads the Codex Woldemar. He then asks why I didn't
> tell him that the emotions and questions were the same.

And then you froth at the mouth, spray spittle, scream "NO COOKIE FOR
YOU!" and explain to them that being grammatically identical does, in no
way, imply that they are semantically identical.

Maybe if we took your cookie away, you'd pay more attention when we tell
you that "grammatically identical" != "semantically identical"? :)

>                                                        I explain to him
> that in English, we say 'ick' to express displeasure, and we rephrase the
> sentence to ask a question. "In Lojban," I say, "the two can occupy the same
> grammatical space. But 'How do I ask a question' and 'how do I express
> displeasure' are still very different questions, linguistically. It doesn't
> matter that the answer is the same, because it doesn't have to be. That in
> Lojban it is, makes no difference as to what the questions ask." And then,
> Jimbob achieves enlightenment.

Maybe this is the deep part of your koan, because I don't grok it.

The answers to the questions "How do I ask a question?" and "How do I
express displeasure?" are different. One is "xu" and the other is ".oi".
Why is it such a big deal that they can be placed into sentences using the
same rules, and that we give a name to every set of cmavo which follows
the same grammar rules?

Do you want us to change "xu" and ".ui" so that they follow different
grammatical rules?

Do you want them placed in catagories with different, but identical names?

Do you want the name of the se cmavo "UI" changed to "FOBWART"?

I'm still not getting what you want, just that you're complaining about
something. :(

- Jay Kominek <jay.kominek@colorado.edu>
  Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose