Re: [lojban] head & modifier in tanru

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 8:58 AM, tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com> wrote:
> I was thinking about why Lojban has the modifier-head order as the default
> in endocentric tanru (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocentric).

Because that's how English does it.

>  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",

Not necessarily. da is the x1 of broda, but the roles of brode and
brodi can vary.

"mi cinfo kalte" could mean that I am a lion and hunter, but more
likely it means that I am a lion hunter.
"mi cukta tcidu" could mean that I am a book and a reader, but more
likely that I am a book reader.

> So, in
> addition to this possibly Anglo- or Euro-centricity being inappropriate for
> Lojban,

As it happens, Sino-Anglo-centric, but I suspect the Sino- was more by
chance than by design.

> 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)

Spanish (mostly SVO): abrelatas (opens-cans --> can-opener)

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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