Re: [lojban] Teaching methods, especially WRT terminators, and validation thereof

["H. Felton" <fagricipni@gmail.com>]

Lindar,

If there is something that I have learned from teaching things
other things than Lojban, it is that the best way for one person to
learn something can be the hardest way for another person to learn
something.

*I* have had no trouble remembering what "ku" means, even though
most of the sentences that I have read in The Draft Reference
grammar have used "cu" to elide the "ku" in the first sumti; but I
have to admit that the fact that I come from a computer programming
background may have some bearing on my lack of difficulties.

If you are saying that
"lo cipni cu klama la bastn. la .atlantas. le dargu le karce"
should be expressed as
"lo cipni ku klama la bastn. ku la .atlantas. ku le dargu ku le karce ku"
; ie, with *all* those "ku"s, then I disagree quite vehemently -- I
admit that the second sentence is not incorrect, but using *all* of
those "ku"s is ridiculously extreme redundancy.  However, if you
are saying that it should be expressed as
"lo cipni ku klama la bastn. la .atlantas. le dargu le karce"
; while I'm not sure that using "ku" is *better* than using "cu",
I'd certainly agree that it is no worse.

On 9/9/10, Luke Bergen <lukeabergen@gmail.com> wrote:
> Pragmatically, I use {cu} all the time (sometimes even when it's
> completely unnecessary e.g. "mi cu klama").  {cu} is a shortcut and in
> spoken language people tend to prefer shortcuts.

I also agree that Bergen's "mi cu klama" should be "mi klama"; the
"cu" is an unwarranted redundancy for a simple pro-sumti; however
if the "mi" were followed by a complex "noi ... [ku'o]" expression
ending with a "ke ... [ke'e]" expression which ends with a "be ...
bei ... [be'o]" expression, I'd have to say that I'd agree with
using "cu" to eliminate the need for some of the terminators and/or
as a cue that the next word is the selbri of the bridi.

I would like to see a better argument of why *I* should start using
"ku" instead of "cu" in
"lo cipni cu klama la bastn. la .atlantas. le dargu le karce"
.  "cu" is a "harder" indicator of the selbri of the bridi
than "ku" simply terminating a sumti because in the type of nested
sumti I have described in the last paragraph, even if the "mi" were
replaced with a simple sumti; eg, lo cipni, and the "noi" were
replaced with "poi"; the "poi" expression could contain internal
"ku"s, so knowing if a particular "ku" ends the complex sumti
requires more analysis than knowing that a "cu" means "close this
sumti and all other expressions subordinate to that sumti because
the next word is the selbri of the bridi".

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