Re: [lojban] Active-stative?

[Stela Selckiku <selckiku@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 6:31 AM, "Alfred W. Tüting" <ti@fa-kuan.muc.de> wrote:
>
> or rendered similarly to the Nootka way
> ("zdane'ikemcmafagyso'ikemprununjelca")
>
> or even exactly according to the Nootka syntax as
> "fagykemyzdanerso'icmapru".


Lately I've had almost enough rafsi-foo that I've been tempted to
experiment with a style closer to that.  There's so few people who the
rafsi are transparent to though that in public I tend to gravitate
instead towards using almost all gismu.  I usually sprinkle in just a
few lujvo that I think anyone might have heard of, or at least that
have some history that I think they might be worth someone's time who
has to look them up and learn them.  For instance in a recent post
here I used "zanfri" and I thought carefully before putting that
venerable lujvo instead of something bland like "nelci" or "gleki"--
but I thought since I was only posting one sentence it wouldn't be too
heavy to include that lesson.

I do use more experimental language in private conversations.  I don't
generally ever go more than four or five rafsi in a lujvo, and usually
only two or three, but I will use a bunch of lujvo in a row, sometimes
a few in the same sentence, and Lojban does begin to feel like a
different sort of language when you stretch it that way.  I'd be
interested in some sort of public forum (perhaps just a recurring
subject prefix on this list would work) where a few of us would play
around with speaking in a style with more improvised lujvo.

For instance here's a game I just thought of.  It's called "za'e".
(zo za'e ca'e cmene lo mi selkei .i va'i lo mi selkei cu du la'e zo
za'e ca'e)  It's pretty simple: Instead of occasionally improvising
lujvo and marking them with "za'e", you don't have to mark the
improvised lujvo, because *every* brivla *must* be an improvised
lujvo! :D  Oh man now that I thought of that game I guess I have to
write at least a sentence to two as an example-- um, let's see-- I
invented a hard game!  OK, ok:

.i mi baurkei neirkei .i mi valsyfintycusku jufrysku .i .a'o do ji'a
lujvyfintyjufrycuskykakne .i da'i do go'i .i je ko banzdifi'i
kelcykansa mi .ui .i'i mu'o

Actually that's not as hard as I thought!  I forgot I could just use
4-letter rafsi if I forgot either the rafsi or (more often) how to
hyphenate the short form lujvo proper.  But a real challenge would be
using distant jvajvo places of the lujvo you were making up! :D


I also thought it was an interesting idea, somewhere earlier in this
thead, to have a brivla that doesn't specify its x1.  I don't see any
reason not to have a brivla that works that way.  All of the brivla
have unspecified places, an infinite number of them, just usually
they're at the end.  There's no reason you can't have a do'e place for
the x1.  You sort of have that for "co'e" already, and certainly for
the phrase "jai do'e broda".  So why not?

I also really enjoy "najyzme" though so I guess I'm just perverse. :P


Anyway I think part of the reason why Lojban often looks like a
European natlang is that we're mostly not using it purely for
experimentation, especially in the most public of forums, instead
we're speaking largely to a community of students that greatly
outnumber the experts.  Lojban is quite flexible, capable of all sorts
of surface manifestations.  It's able to look and act like what those
students are used to in many ways, and so we bend it into an
approachable, comprehensible shape.

So while I like to experiment, in the context of speaking to all these
beginners the sorts of forms that have appealed to me to explore are
forms that are even simpler than a normal European sentence structure.
 For instance I'll use a lot of very basic sentence shapes like
"broda" and "brode brodi" with a lot of attitudinal flavoring, only
occasionally using any sumti, like "broda ge'e .i ge'e brode ge'e
brodi .i brodi ge'e ge'e .i mi brodi ge'e lo broda .i ge'e broda .i
ge'e brodo broda".  My idea at least is that's a more experimental,
more Lojbanic style of grammar, that's also simple enough for everyone
to follow.


mi'e la stela selckiku
mu'o

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