From rob@twcny.rr.com Tue Nov 13 14:25:23 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: rob@twcny.rr.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_0_1); 13 Nov 2001 22:25:22 -0000 Received: (qmail 23730 invoked from network); 13 Nov 2001 22:25:21 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.172) by m10.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 13 Nov 2001 22:25:21 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mailout6.nyroc.rr.com) (24.92.226.125) by mta2.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 13 Nov 2001 22:25:22 -0000 Received: from mail1.twcny.rr.com (mail1-1 [24.92.226.139]) by mailout6.nyroc.rr.com (8.11.6/Road Runner 1.12) with ESMTP id fADMPLm21936 for ; Tue, 13 Nov 2001 17:25:21 -0500 (EST) Received: from riff ([24.92.246.4]) by mail1.twcny.rr.com (Post.Office MTA v3.5.3 release 223 ID# 0-59787U250000L250000S0V35) with ESMTP id com for ; Tue, 13 Nov 2001 17:25:19 -0500 Received: from rob by riff with local (Exim 3.32 #1 (Debian)) id 163lym-0000GC-00 for ; Tue, 13 Nov 2001 17:24:28 -0500 Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 17:24:28 -0500 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Why is there so much irregularity in cmavo/gismu? Message-ID: <20011113172428.B841@twcny.rr.com> Reply-To: rob@twcny.rr.com References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.23i X-Is-It-Not-Nifty: www.sluggy.com From: Rob Speer X-Yahoo-Profile: squeekybobo On Tue, Nov 13, 2001 at 08:59:28AM -0700, Jay Kominek wrote: > On Tue, 13 Nov 2001, Craig wrote: > > > The gismu are fine. It's the rafsi that need work. And while we're at it, > > can we get rid of selma'o? They are very misleading. the place structure of > > selma'o is x2 is the grammatical class containing particle x1 - meaning > > that by calling them both UI we put xu and .ui in the same grammar class. > > they play extremely different roles. .ui expresses a feeling. xu makes > > questions. Sounds the same to me! > > Can you construct a sentence where replacing a .ui with xu makes it > _grammatically_ incorrect? > > Can you construct a sentence where replacing a xu with .ui makes it > _grammatically_ incorrect? > > If the answer to both of these is "no", then they are in the same > grammatical catagory no matter how much you want to complain about it. > > se cmavo are only a grammatical distinctions, and indicate very little > about semantic function. > > Oh, and I seem to rememeber you using 'xu' and '.ui' the last time this > came up. Is 'xu' being in UI the only thing that bothers you about se > cmavo? If you want to junk something, I'd hope there is at least more than > one instance of it annoying you. > > And one more thing, if you're going to replace se cmavo, what are you > going to put in its place? Or will all the words be in the same class, and > if we want to refer to ca, pu and bu, we've got to say "those time tense > cmavo"? I mostly disagree with Craig's hatred of selma'o. He's railing against the whole system because of, apparently, a mistaken idea of their purpose. However, I believe that from usage some selma'o will eventually combine. What is the grammatical distinction between ZEhA, ZAhO, FAhA, and PU? And why does CAhA have different grammar? It is grammatically correct to say {mi pu ca'a broda} but not {mi ca'a pu broda}. -- la rab.spir noi sarji so'a le selma'o