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

Re: [lojban] Robin retry: commands.



On Saturday, May 25, 2013 11:45:25 PM UTC+4, Betsemes wrote:
On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 12:21 PM, la arxokuna
<gleki.is...@gmail.com> wrote:
> xu do pu viska zo xei

Okay, so xei is being used instead of rei to mean fourteen. According
to http://dag.github.io/cll/4/2/, those cmavo beginning with "x" are
reserved for experimental use, so I see xei is experimental. But what
to do with "xei" once a substitute for "rei" is officially approved to
mean 14? Maybe pick one of those I listed on my mail before? Or maybe,
the use of those "xVV" cmavo is now more permanent, is it?

{rei}  may indeed lead to confusion with {re} as they are both numbers. So speaking in terms of practicism {xei} is preferable.
But then {rei} is useless. Let's look at the corpus: http://www.lojban.org/corpus/search/rei
I could count only 5 (!) real usages of {rei}. So why bother? In the corpus we have many more occurrencies of other words that have never been properly defined and/or entered into jvs.

As for commands I'm sure it's an utterly important thing.
So using rei for command imperatives and {reinai} for prohibitives would be nice (of course {xoi} can also be used but {rei} reminds of {.ei} so ...)
Also the sound [r] has subliminal impression of resoluteness in many languages.
Three-syllable cmavo cluster for prohibitives would be too verbose.

the CLL was written 16 years ago. Such words as {xo'e}, {xo'o}, {xa'o} are used many more times than some even one-syllable cmavo.
So although officially {xo'e} is experimental it's de facto one of the key concepts of the language. The same for the other two xV'V.

For me {.e'i}=to have to
{.ei} = should/ought to

May be experts in English can explain later the difference between them but I'm pretty sure I can feel it. So I don't want to lose those two meanings.

mu'o mi'e la gleki arxokuna

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