Subject: Re: [lojban] Why is there so much irregularity in cmavo/gismu?

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 10:42:54 EST

In a message dated 11/13/2001 1:26:11 AM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> It's one thing for English to have its quirks, but one competing to 
> replace it should be as regular as possible. Here's an obvious 
> example, with modals.
> 
> mukti=mu'i
> mupli=mu'u
> 
> Why the irregularity? Maybe because someone decided to make a Hindi 
> word thousands of years ago that didn't jive with a Chinese one made 
> even earlier.
> 
> As far as I'm concerned, all the cmavo, gismu, and rafsi should be 
> redone so they are much more systematic. For true cultural 
> nutrality, make them more or less random within a systematic 
> framework.
> 

Well, it depends on what system you have in mind. I assume that your problem 
is not (as the example suggests) that cmavo don't have very clear relation to 
the "corresponding" gismu, since the phonology explains that. So the problem 
is why are similar looking words so unrelated in meaning (and conversely).
In this case the system is not a semantic one but a heuristic one: Lojban is 
supposed to be easy to learn and gismu are meant to be easier to learn if 
they have bits and pieces of the "corresponding" word in your native 
language. There was a formula for this and the gismu list is one kind of 
optimization under that formula (which includes a few other factors, to be 
sure). Now, the plausible theory about learning has not turned out too well, 
but it is a part of Lojban and so we are stuck with the results. If you want 
a language where words that mean similar things have similar forms, there are 
many around (try AUI, which is about the purest semantic prime language I 
know of -- it has no other virtues that I know of and is even unchangeably 
decimal).