Subject: Re: [lojban] Types of fu'ivla in natural languages

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 16:31:34 -0400

At 10:38 AM 10/22/01 -0400, Pierre Abbat wrote:
>How common are types 2, 3, and 4 fu'ivla in natural languages? (I don't think
>it makes sense to speak of a type-1 fu'ivla in a language that doesn't have a
>foreign-word marker.)

We have such type-1 markers in English - we often mark foreign words with 
italics or some other font change (and that is considered proper 
style). The ones I see most often used and so marked is "deja vu" and 
"savoir faire" (unfortunately I cannot figure out how to italicize text in 
this mailer). We also identify them by the use of nonstandard diacritics 
(e.g. fiancee'). Obviously there is no marker for such words in the spoken 
language unless we alter our accent for foreign words (often 
necessary). Type 1 in-line borrowing is the norm for English until a word 
is grabbed informally (often as slang) and bastardized into a Type 2 or 
Type 4 (which bastardization is usually considered uncouth usage until the 
word has been in the language for a generation or more). I recently read 
that the origin of the derogatory word "wop" for Italians is as a borrowing 
of "guapo", as an example of such slangy Type 4-ing.

We often use Type 2 borrowing in English for names or at least for things 
that are proper nouns in English (Pennsylvania Dutch, who were really 
Deutsch), though I have more rarely seen capitalization of a German 
polysyllabic abstraction ("Weltschung" (sp?), but that can be seen as Type 
1 as well since the capitalization is distinctive to German nouns.)

I think that Type 3 borrowing is more or less unique to Loglan/Lojban, 
though there is some similarity to the manner of Chinese borrowing, which 
attempts in borrowing a word to choose native syllables that are relevant 
in meaning to compose the word, even though this results in mangling worse 
than some other borrowing choice.

lojbab

--
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org