[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [lojban] will you help me understand BAhE+BU?

On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 11:37:46AM -0800, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 07:40:07PM -0700, .alyn.post. wrote:
> > I'm trying to make sense of various statements about Magic Words
> > on the wiki:
> > 
> >   (BAhE, even though it can modify any word, is not a magic
> >   word, because it doesn't affect the function of the word it
> >   modifies)[1]
> 
> I wonder what would happen if I simply declared by fiat that ba'e
> is deprecated, and you should use ge'e or another UI instead
> (since AFAICT they have exactly the same "meaning" (or, rather,
> lack of meaning)), and in 2 years if no insurmountable problems
> are found it'll be removed from the grammar?
> 
> This strikes me as about the largest change I could make without
> immediately being tossed out on my ass. -_-

We'd need a za'e replacement too.  Which doesn't seem hard.

For what it's worth, the fact that BAhE performs inappropriate
carnal acts on the PEG grammar actually isn't as important to me as
it being basically a UI in how it's used, but with a totally
different grammar from *everything else in the language*.  The only
other thing that works even remotely like BAhE is ZO.  In and of
itself this wouldn't be *so* bad, but in basically every semantic
respect it works just like UI.  It's awful.

ZEI is also crazy-exceptional, but at least it's *useful*.  There's
nothing else you can replace ZEI with without making a new
grammatical construct.  But BAhE is *trivially* replaced with a
couple of UI, with no loss of expressive power.  It's just awful.

-Robin

-- 
http://singinst.org/ :  Our last, best hope for a fantastic future.
Lojban (http://www.lojban.org/): The language in which "this parrot
is dead" is "ti poi spitaki cu morsi", but "this sentence is false"
is "na nei".   My personal page: http://www.digitalkingdom.org/rlp/

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.