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Re: [lojban] sumti-raising cmavo thingy
On 8/15/2016 4:18 PM, Bruno Panasiewicz wrote:
That is or isn't the point, depending on the intentions of the
proposers. I think that the main motive is to free up a spot in the now
expensive short cmavo space. Simply, the uses of «li» and «cu» have no
overlaps, so collapsing them is a good idea.
[large number of strongly negative attitudinals]
Why does "having no overlaps" make it "a good idea"? The language is
Lojban, not Speedtalk". And why those particular words; they are hardly
the least used short words in the language?
If one were going to collapse two words, one would probably want them as
similar as possible in meaning and usage..
This would be an incredibly bad idea, if only because of the relearning
penalty and the invalidation of almost thirty years of language use. It
is that sort of arbitrary prescriptive change that I have fought most
strongly against.
And why is it necessary to free up a spot? We are supposedly done with
the language design. There should be no new cmavo unless they arise
through actual usage, and it is rather hard to imagine a usage arising
so useful as to suddenly and arbitrarily demand a short wordform.
Especially since no such need has arisen in 30 years.
But if such occurred there are other choices far better than jamming two
entirely unrelated functions into one word (something that was
explicitly designed OUT of the language). Move a little-use 2 letter
cmavo out of that word space (or even eliminate it; e.g. de and di could
be replaced by da with a subscript).
Seriously considering this sort of change at this stage of the language,
is a good way to get lojbab to retire immediately and permanently.
lojbab
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