On Wed, Apr 07, 2004 at 05:17:46AM -0700, Jorge Llambmas wrote:
> --- Jordan DeLong <fracture@allusion.net> wrote:
> > ro me la djan. ku poi mi sanji cu xabju le merko
>
> Or you can even say {ro la djan}. A better example would have been:
Ah this is a good point. The quantifiers on {la djan.} are {ro la
su'o djan.}. You don't even need to say the "ro"---there can always
be more than one djan.
Of course the listener probably won't assume you're talking about
all of them unless you say something a little clearer.
> ro da poi djan gi'e slabu mi cu xabju le merko
How's this better than
ro da poi se cmene zo djan. gi'e slabu mi cu xabju le merko
Other than syllable count I see no advantage, and we've already
established that CMENE=BRIVLA is a net loss on syllable count.
> > The extra 3 syllables in that sentence are certainly going to be
> > more than paid for by all the elided {cu} in the rest of whatever
> > text/conversation is going on.
>
> But I'm not saying putting CMENE in BRIVLA will save you syllables.
> It will just make the grammar simpler.
[...]
I'd probably agree with you that the grammar is more complicated
than it should ideally be. But I think simplifying it for any
purpose other than the coolness of having a smaller number of rules
in the grammar is misguided. Ease of learning should be a non-issue.
--
Jordan DeLong
fracture@allusion.net
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