From a.rosta@ntlworld.com Thu Nov 29 18:15:42 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: a.rosta@ntlworld.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_0_1); 30 Nov 2001 02:15:42 -0000 Received: (qmail 95583 invoked from network); 30 Nov 2001 02:15:42 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.167) by m2.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 30 Nov 2001 02:15:42 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mta07-svc.ntlworld.com) (62.253.162.47) by mta1.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 30 Nov 2001 02:15:42 -0000 Received: from andrew ([62.255.40.89]) by mta07-svc.ntlworld.com (InterMail vM.4.01.03.13 201-229-121-113) with SMTP id <20011130021540.BHV12966.mta07-svc.ntlworld.com@andrew> for ; Fri, 30 Nov 2001 02:15:40 +0000 To: Subject: RE: [lojban] To clarify... Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 02:14:59 -0000 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 From: "And Rosta" X-Yahoo-Profile: andjamin Jorge: > la tinkit cusku di'e > > >I think the grammar is > >beautiful and very interesting, but the words themselves are > >unsatisfactory (both in form, and what was chosen to be a gismu). > > I have often made the same criticism, especially about the > morphology. The forms of gismu (CCVCV and CVCCV) are nice enough, > but once you get into rafsi, lujvo and fu'ivla, the rules become > so complicated that it's hard to believe this is a constructed > language we're talking about. The reason we got to this state, > as I understand it, is that the pioneers became so enamoured of > the gismu forms that everything else, which was added later, had > to be fixed so as to leave the gismu untouched, which means that > all of the ugly patches were more or less forced. That's my understanding too. > In any case, fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you > look at it, there is already a language community big enough that > changing any of that is nearly out of the question. In my case, > the beautiful and interesting grammar more than compensates for > the distasteful morphology, so I put up with the latter and enjoy > the former. You have to be prepared to compromise on perfection > if you want a real language... It's interesting that there is such near-unanimity (among those who care about design issues) that the morphology is a disaster and that shorter gismu and no rafsi would have been a much better solution. It's this sort of thing that leads me to believe that had the development of Loglan/Lojban been allowed to be driven primarily by design issues rather than by the wish to reach a stable and usable form as quickly as possible, the language would nonetheless have tended to progressively stabilize as the optimal design -- objectively arrived at through the consensus of rational minds -- was progressively approximated ever more closely. --And.