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Re: [lojban] One end cmavo to rule them all



A more human-related followup point: having terminators sound like their openers is a problem in the presence of a mix of both nesting and noise. For example, someone could get very confused by {ko'a noi broda ko'e noi xau} if the {xau} gets muddled, because the second {noi} would otherwise be starting a new clause entirely.

mi'e la latro'a mu'o


On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 1:09 PM, Ian Johnson <blindbravado@gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 9:00 AM, TR NS <transfire@gmail.com> wrote:

Also, thinking about the use case you describe, it occurs to me that it would be much easier to remember a single cmavo that worked in conjunction with the opening cmavo, e.g. `ke melbri nixli kexo ckule` instead of `ke melbri nixli ke'e ckule` where `xo` is some cmavo that means "close the cmavo I just mentioned".
"Selma'o cast" type cmavo, which is really what you are suggesting (it casts LE to KU, NOI to KUhO, etc.) are generally difficult to formalize. This is a big part of why mekso is such a big mess. (Another is just YACC parser limitations, some of which have not been corrected in the semi-official PEG or even the zasni gerna).

Going into some details, let's call your cmavo {xau} for discussion ({xo} is taken). {vau} and arguably {boi} do not match your paradigm. {le'u} looks like it should, but it really doesn't, because if {lo'u xau} terminates {lo'u} then you can't quote {lo'u xau} to explain what it means. (By contrast, you can quote {le'u} using {zo} and can quote {zo} using {lo'u}/{le'u}, which means there is syntax available for defining these in Lojban.) The interaction with {lu} would be intelligible but counterintuitive and possibly not formalizable: {lu ... lu xau} appears to start a second quote and then, doesn't. And finally you would need to specify how exactly {xau} interacts with {si} (is {ke xau} one word or two?). Everything else would probably work out.

mi'e la latro'a mu'o

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