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

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 8:03 AM, H. Felton <fagricipni@gmail.com> wrote:
>  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.

I would argue that "cu" is better, for at least two reasons:

(1) From the point of view of the speaker, the rule "always use 'cu'
when you need to separate the selbri from what comes before" is easier
to remember than the rule "use 'ku', 'kei', 'be'o', 'ku'o', 'ge'u',
... when you need to separate the selbri from what comes before if you
can get away with using a single one, otherwise use 'cu'".

(2) From the point of view of the listener, "cu" gives more
information than any terminator. A terminator tells you that whatever
structure it terminates has ended, but it doesn't tell you what comes
next. "cu" tells you that whatever pre-selbri structures were open
have terminated, and now here comes the selbri.

So "cu" is win-win for the speaker and the listener, even in those
cases where a single terminator would suffice.

As a personal quirk, when I read "lo cipni ku klama" my first instinct
is to check back whether I have missed something. Maybe there was
another gadri "lo lo cipni ku klama"? Or "lo bevri be lo cipni ku
klama"? In other words, my first instict is to suspect that "klama" is
not the selbri yet. So it takes more effort for me to process "lo
cipni ku klama" than "lo cipni cu klama".

> I also agree that Bergen's "mi cu klama" should be "mi klama"; the
> "cu" is an unwarranted redundancy for a simple pro-sumti;

I am not much bothered by that, and I probably do it sometimes. For
some reason an unnecessary terminator bothers me more than an
unnecessary separator. In fact I tend to always use "cu" after a
cmevla, because I think cmevla should be in sema'o BRIVLA.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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