Subject: word proposal

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2001 02:21:56 -0000

ok, i'll explain my example better here. the gismu were 
not "designed" at all. they were more or less randomly made, and 
rafsi more or less randomly attached. because of this, we got a lot 
of irregularities. the book specifically mentions that many modals 
are irregular. a simple example: marji is ma'e because manri took 
ma'i. why? simply because marji and manri are both one of the few 
chosen modals, yet both have the same CV'V pattern. modals are one 
case where it's very clear that the cmavo directly corresponds to the 
gismu, so there really should be a regularity there. it's more or 
less a form of conjugation, which natural languages are mocked 
endlessly for their irregularity in. tenses are another. 
attitudinals are a bit unique, and may or may not need to correspond 
to gismu (although i'd rather have them all regular or all random 
rather than the irregular corresponding words in the refrgram). the 
situation is much worse with rafsi.

craig, you say you like the gismu. but the fact is you have to 
change the gismu to redo the rafsi. for example, you could 
standardize on two letter cmavo adding "n" to make rafsi, and adjust 
gismu accordingly so you don't have conflicts (as gismu will have 
their own way of forming rafsi). and you can organize the gismu 
according to frequency of use, and make rafsi regular according to 
the letter it starts with (what types are assigned, and how the 
letters are assigned).

the real point is not the specifics. it's that, if you're trying to 
change things to be better, do it completely. of course other 
languages have irregularities. but lojban is supposed to be better, 
right?