From a.rosta@dtn.ntl.com Wed Aug 29 16:53:26 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: a.rosta@dtn.ntl.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_3_2); 29 Aug 2001 23:53:26 -0000 Received: (qmail 93036 invoked from network); 29 Aug 2001 23:52:22 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by l7.egroups.com with QMQP; 29 Aug 2001 23:52:22 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mta05-svc.ntlworld.com) (62.253.162.45) by mta2 with SMTP; 29 Aug 2001 23:52:22 -0000 Received: from andrew ([62.253.84.6]) by mta05-svc.ntlworld.com (InterMail vM.4.01.03.00 201-229-121) with SMTP id <20010829235220.GKBD20588.mta05-svc.ntlworld.com@andrew> for ; Thu, 30 Aug 2001 00:52:20 +0100 Reply-To: To: Subject: RE: [lojban] The Knights who forgot to say "ni!" Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2001 00:51:27 +0100 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 From: "And Rosta" Xod: > On Wed, 29 Aug 2001, Jorge Llambias wrote: > > I never use {jei} because I find {du'u xukau} perfectly > > satisfactory. > > If they are equivalent (I'd like to see somebody argue that they are not!) > why not use jei as it's shorter? One reason would be that {xu kau} rightly reflects that semantically the bridi patterns with other Q-kau bridi, so there's greater form--meaning isomorphism. Still, I'd prefer {jei} to mean {xu kau} rather than {jetnu zei gradu}. Even more, though, I'd like jei & ni to die, so that after the baseline thaw they could be reused for high frequency longwinded things. -- Lojbab often invokes the deity Zipf in saying that frequency will shorten the long, but there exists no mechanism in Lojban for doing so! I'm hoping, though, that a movement to reassign little-used cmavo, or to rework the morphology to make available new short cmavo will get underway eventually. --And.