Subject: Re: [lojban] Another stab at a Record on ce'u

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 11:18:14 EDT

In a message dated 8/29/2001 8:15:24 AM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> You can't get rid of this imprecision without either (i) formulating rules
> that are simple enough to be workable but constrain people to a degree
> they won't accept, or (ii) formulating rules that are so complicated they'll
> leak, and so complicated they'll be ignored. Leave ka for usage to decide.
> Anything else, it transpires, is a waste of energy.
> 

Well, it is nice to agree with And from time to time; it is a waste of 
energy. This was clear early on, but y'all kept at it and I tried to keep 
up, though all the wanderings to half a dozen (probably more) other points 
and back. 
You don't want a leaky {ka} (or any other leaky concepts -- well actually you 
want them all leaky but you want to pretend otherwise) but you don't want 
rules to keep them from being leaky (part of the evidence for the above 
parenthesis). As answer to the first part, I gave you a set of rules, based 
on your proposals -- incororating the best of the lot and them working to 
maximize efficiency and simplicity. Despite what And says, this set gives 
shorter forms than those using {si'o} and involves no conflicts.
The main objection is to the first-{ce'u} abbreviation for an all {ce'u} form 
(at a glance, the only part anyone has actually thought through). That is 
quite detachable, though it is the best compromise in the given system (and, 
after all, the all {ce'u} form is the basic one in the language). If we only 
need that form occasionally, no much will be lost by writing in all the 
{ce'u}. So what about the rest, which are just a compliation of your 
suggestions? 
I suspect that y'all will reject them, but it would be nice to see some 
reasons given -- to go into the record, so that the next time this comes up 
we can say early on "This is a waste, we don't really want precision."