Re: [lojban] Re: Question about apparent inconsistency with "nixli".

[John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com>]

The original reasoning behind the gismu construction program was that this would 
give words that were easier for a greater number of people to learn, since they 
would see bits of their own language in them.  Though this was a proposal by a 
social psychologist, it was never tested.  Anecdotal evidence all over the place 
on the topic, with a tendency, however, to note that the "seeing a familiar word 
in a gismu" led as often as not to the *wrong* association.  This result has 
also never been tested, of course, but is a familiar problem in rote 
memorization. The familiar solutions of grouping attern recognition, and the 
like have never had much traction in Logjam.




----- Original Message ----
From: Pan Mistwood <panmistwood@gmail.com>
To: lojban <lojban@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tue, November 30, 2010 11:18:36 AM
Subject: [lojban] Re: Question about apparent inconsistency with "nixli".

OK, your detailed explanation shows why the algorithm would have
resulted in the words it did. A pity such patterns were overlooked
with the method used to generate the gismu. Anyway, thank you!


On Nov 30, 8:03 am, Oren <get.o...@gmail.com> wrote:
> coi pan,
>
> The patterns weren't designed that way. Gismu were all generated to
> approximate common words (with weights for more spoken languages) from the
> six original source languages. It just so happens that:
>
> English:"man", Chinese"nanren", Arabic: "nsan" etc..-> { nanmu }
> Chinese"nanhai", Spanish "ninio," Arabic: "uladn" etc.. -> { nanla }
>
> I guess the abundance of "nan"-like syllables in natural languages was in
> part to the (weighted) chinese character "nan" (男) that's in both of them,
> in conjunction with similar coincidental syllables in other heavily weighted
> languages.
>
> The female counterpart "ni" (女) character seems to have also influenced the
> female gismus, but without as much agreement on that second consonant.
>
> Hope that clears it up a little!
>
> co'o
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 07:18, Pan Mistwood <panmistw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Back when I first dove into learning Lojban, I noticed an apparent
> > inconsistency with four gismu. And as far as I can tell, there's no
> > reason for it, but I could be mistaken. So, after much
> > procrastination, I'm asking about it here. (And as far as I could find
> > with Google Web search and a search within this group, it hasn't been
> > brought up before, which is rather surprising to me.)
>
> > The gismu "nanmu" virtually means the English "man" or, more
> > generally, "male humanoid". The gismu "ninmu" virtually means the
> > English "woman" or "female humanoid". The gismu "nanla" virtually
> > means the English "boy". Now, I understand that they are not preferred
> > over the gismu "verba", "remna", and "prenu", but they do exist and
> > are recognised as Lojbanic gismu.
>
> > From those gismu, I can see a pattern. "nanmu" and "nanla" share "na-"
> > while "nanla" and "nanmu" share "-mu". Following this pattern, the
> > gismu virtually meaning the English "girl" would be "ninla"; "ni-" as
> > in "ninmu" and "-la" as in "nanla". However, the gismu is actually
> > "nixli". My question: as "ninla" is valid gismu syntax, is consistent
> > with "nanmu", "nanla", and "ninmu", and is not already used to mean
> > something else, why is "nixli" used instead?
>
> > --
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> --
> Oren Robinson
> (315) 569-2888
> 102 Morrison Ave
> Somerville, MA 02144

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