[lojban] Re: experimental cmavo in lojgloss.

["Jorge Llambías" <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 6:47 AM, Daniel Brockman <daniel@brockman.se> wrote:
>
> But what do you do in a live conversation if you want to correct a mistake?
> Do you have to wait for the other person to say something first?

In a spoken conversation typos are less likely. :)

Also, you are less likely to want to change some particular choice of
word, simply because you don't have the text in front of you to check
what you just said. Unless one is listening to a recording, a fluent
speaker is normally not even aware of making any slips. Someone
learning a new language is much more conscious of each individual
word, but a fluent speaker is more likely to concentrate on the ideas
expressed, not the exact words used.

When you really are concentrating on some choice of word, and talking
about the word, then it's probably more clear to use the normal
grammar to talk about the word, rather than use some shortcut for
replacement.

That's why I've never been too keen on SA, it seems so wrong to have
to concentrate on the exact words you are using instead of on what you
are expressing with them. SU is not so bad, only because it is so
drastic: "strike all that, let me start again". That's useful when you
are carefully trying to phrase something right and you realize that
you are making a mess of it. That happens to fluent speakers too when
dealing with complex ideas. SI is not so likely to be used by a fluent
speaker, it's more of a crutch for the beginner, it's tolerable
because the very last word is still fresh in the mind and still
accessible as a word.

Anyway, I'm not really opposed to people using things like SA or the
LOhAI/SAhAI/LEhAI construction if they find it useful. Usage rules.
It's just that to me it's too artificial, it approaches language from
the wrong end (from the valsi instead of the se valsi).

I have a similar gripe about "di'u" and "la'e di'u". Why is the most
common and useful "la'e di'u" a compound, and the less useful "di'u" a
single word? Normally we are much more likely to want to talk about
la'e di'u than about di'u.

mu'o mi'e xorxes


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