Subject: Re: [lojban] META : Who is everyone (and what are they saying)

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2001 18:52:43 EDT

In a message dated 9/18/2001 11:48:37 AM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> You took early retirement with a pay increase?! Me green green
> green with envy!
> 

Don't be. More than what I got working at UMSL, less than anyone else I know 
gets working or retired (well, not quite, I suppose -- some of those below 
me in the old list must still be below me, but I don't know them by name or 
face). 

<On my claim about Lojban being unspelled out, it clearly is many many
times better spelled out than any other invented language has ever been,
but a grammar is a rule system that defines sentences as form--meaning
pairings and I do believe that it is therefore massively incomplete, even
setting aside the gismu and lujvo. For example, try going through the
mahoste and identifying those cmavo whose meaning is both clear and
uncontroversial -- there are very very few. >

I would probably find more than you (except, of course, that they then become 
controversial), but, yes, the gismu list gives boundaries and we have to fill 
in the center (remember {botpi}?) as much as need be (and so more as time 
goes along). this does not seem to me to be incompletion and does seem to be 
where usage decides things. And where prior official definitions handed down 
would have been a disaster. I am much less sure about cmavo, which I think 
are pretty clear by and large (though I obviously don't agree with everyone's 
ideas -- but then, I just think they are wrong) and have to be. They are 
part of the bones, cmavo are flesh and ornamentation. We learn things about 
cmavo but not, generally, what they mean.