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Re: [lojban] cmevla as a class of brivla

la .tijlan. cu cusku di'e

On 27 May 2013 17:48, selpa'i <seladwa@gmx.de <mailto:seladwa@gmx.de>>
wrote:>
 >> But what happens whether "la betsemes solvor" wants to marry "la
 >> selpa'i tsani"? Oops. What should we do with them? Do we forbid them
 >> to marry because the child's name violates the language naming rules?
 >
 >
 > You'd have to call them something like {la broda me la .betsemes.
selpa'i}. It's very ugly, but because there is a way to make it work,
it's not broken, just inconvenient. Or so goes the argument.

In the Western academic tradition, citation is made with the source
author's surname, and the whole name is inverted in the bibliography so
that the surname comes first to be sorted. This practice would look like
{solvor co betsemes} with the current anti-tanru order of cmene
({solvor} being the surname/modifier). Instead, we could be consistent
with the general head-final order of tanru and have the "first" name
come after the modifying surname(s):

lo mlatu ratcu
a rat which is related to a cat (e.g. caught or eaten by a cat)

la solvor betsemes
Betsemes who is related to Solvor (e.g. born to or raised by Solvor)
This brings up a point that has to be laid out clearly. Is a string of cmevla to be considered a single name, or is each cmevla to be seen seperately? Currently, {la .solvor.betsemes.} is just a single name, without any real structure. The Merge must decide whether to keep CMEVLA strings atomic as a whole (Option 1) or to split them apart just like normal tanru (Option 2).
Option 2 has the effect that some multi-cmevla would undergo a slight change in meaning, e.g. imagine {la .klaus.peter.} whose name consists of two equal parts, neither of which can be considered to modify the other. Or imagine someone whose name contains a glottal stop. The effect that Option 2 would have on such names *might* be negligible, I'm not sure. {la .klaus.peter.} would be a tanru name, so it means a "klaus" type of "peter".
In any case, we could manipulate such names freely. We can {.klaus. bo .peter.} or {.peter. co .klaus.} because once split, the above problem doesn't exist anymore (it's effectively a case of {BRIVLA bo/co BRIVLA}), though it still makes a difference for the meaning of the unsplit cmevla string. It becomes especially apparent once you add a third component that is supposed to modify the entire cmevla string: 

lo xekri .ford.taurus.

Option 1 has it that {melbi} modifies {.ford.taurus.}
Option 2 would interpret it as {(melbi .ford.) .taurus.}

It can't be both, so a decision has to be made.


"First" names are "first" in the sense that they precede the other parts
of a person's name in certain natlangs. But it's surnames - also called
"last" names - which historically come before newly given names that are
historically "last/newest" names. In several Asian countries, the
historically-first "last" name comes first, and the historically-last
"first" name comes last. This is analogous to the biological
nomenclature, where the generic name precedes the specific name, such as
"Giraffa camelopardalis rothschildi". In a sense, "Giraffa" is a
surname, shared by different descendents of the genus. If we were to
Lojbanize this composite name, I wouldn't expect it to be inverted for
no good reason. (And the fact that certain components of such biological
names are readily available as non-cmevla (i.e. gismu, lujvo, fu'ivla)
while others aren't, is another argument for allowing the use of both
word-types in a seamless manner.) (FWIW, the order of surname is also
somewhat related to endianness. Wikipedia often uses the big-endian YMD
format, again most common in certain Asian countries, for easier sorting
of dates in the table.)

Or perhaps we could radically change the default tanru order to
head-initial, which would be consistent with the right-branching NOI,
GOI, ME, NU, etc:
Please no. The entire language is generally left-branching, apart from {bo}. Let's not revert something so fundamental.
In what way are ME or NU right-branching? To me, the term "branching" or "grouping" in this context means the grouping of identical (or similar) items in succession, for instance: 

broda brode brodi -> (broda brode) brodi
X .e Y .a Z       -> (X .e Y) .a Z
Some constructs are head-initial, but those have two different components interacting instead, e.g. {KOhA NOI}. I think we need to dinstinguish between these different situations of branching.
I don't think it's a good idea to get rid of symmetry. The whole point of The Merge is to *increase* symmetry, is it not? 

mu'o mi'e la selpa'i

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