[lojban] head & modifier in tanru

[tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com>]

I was thinking about why Lojban has the modifier-head order as the default in endocentric tanru (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocentric). The first reason I could think of was the readability of x2, x3... in an APA (argument-predicate-argument, SVO) environment. In "da brodi drode broda de" (the head being "broda"), the relationship between each brivla and each sumti seems more intuitive with their distances being optimally short: "da", which is the merged x1 of "brodi", "brode", and "broda", is next to these brivla's sequence, and "de", which is the x2 of "broda", immediatly follows "broda". However, as for AAP (SOV), "da de brodi brode broda", the default tanru order does not work in as much intuitive a way. Both "da" and "de" are more distant from the head "broda" than what they would have been if the tanru's order were head-modifier i.e. "da de broda brode brodi". At least on this point it seems a little bit shame that Lojban is not optimised for AAP, the type most prevalent among human languages on this planet.

CLL says "The standard order of Lojban tanru, whereby the 
modifier
    precedes what it modifies, is very natural to English-speakers" (5.8). This may well be related to the fact that English is APA and that this type syntactically gets along with the modifier-head order as I have just pointed out. But a study which I brought up in other topics suggests that even native APA speakers unconsciously yet cognitively tend to prefer AAP (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/06/roots-of-langua/). So, in addition to this possibly Anglo- or Euro-centricity being inappropriate for Lojban, I suspect also that the decided default tanru order might not really be 'natural' to English-speakers themselves on their subconscious level of cognition. I personally like the idea of more basic components preceding less basic components, as it allows a more pictorial way of communicating information; it allows you to picture an image naturally as you receive each word in the order of semantic essentiality. Experienced painters don't start from the details (the textures of a mountain's surface, the moles on a person's skin, etc.). But Lojban tanru runs the other way around; it paints first the secondary details then the primary part: rufsu je srasu bo claxu cmana, ci mei ke cmalu je xekri barna ke'e mebri.

On second thought, I realised that a head-modifier tanru would have been a reverse of its modifier-head lujvo partner, which I'm not sure would have been convenient. But then again why not head-modifier for lujvo components? Compounds like this certainly exist in natural languages:

 Chinese (SVO): 录音 lùyīn (record-sound --> sound-recording)
 Hebrew (occasionally SVO): בֵּית סֵפֶר bet sefer (house-book --> school)

mu'o lo ka'e ctuca be mi mi'e tijlan

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