Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: zo xruti xruti

From: Adam Raizen <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 18 Aug 2002 02:22:38 +0200

la lojbab. cusku di'e

> At 10:01 PM 8/17/02 +0200, Adam Raizen wrote:
> >'sezyxru' (and 'vo'a zei xruti' and any other lujvo I can think of
> >other than 'zilpavyxru') often do not have the necessary meaning.
One
> >often wants to say that something reverted to a former state,
>
> fatne binxo? (fatybi'o)
>
> Originally binxo/galfi cenba/stika
> were intended to be the generic words for change, both agentive and
> non-agentive. Regularization of place structures and sumti-raising
made
> the x1 of galfi and stika an event, allowing the use of gansu or
zukte
> for agentive and purposeful agentive action to modify those. fatne
then
> was to be used to indicate the reverse of any of these changes (or
any
> other reversal of process not easily indicated by na'e/to'e). xruti
was an
> overlapping word for what now is fatne ke galfi (gasnu) or fatne ke
stika
> (gasnu) because the latter were too long for their frequency per
Zipf.

I understand the historical development, but the current definition of
fatne is "x1 [sequence] is in reverse order from x2 [sequence]; x1
(object) is inverted from x2 (object)", and I don't see how that can
include reverting or returning. For one thing, it doesn't contain a
place for the state/property that is returned to. If someone says 'mi
fatne', does that mean that they're standing on their head, or that
they've returned?

> Thus I can see it as being a dispreferred choice to go away from
dikyjvo,
> but it is hard to call the language "broken" when this isn't easy or
> requires a longer word form than we would prefer/Zipf would suggest.

The problem in this case isn't that it's difficult or long, it's that
there is no solution (which doesn't use 'zi'o'). While I realize that
some people don't care so much about seljvajvo/dikyjvo, I think that I
can complain that the language is broken if there is *no* seljvajvo
option.

> > (I concede that 'zilpavyxru' would have the necessary
> >meaning, but it is unnecessarily long and complicated.)
>
> Why not just zilxru? The pa seems to be the logical default for a
deleted
> place, since you can get the others with SE rather than numbering.

I would think that 'zil' by itself would work like 'don' and other
KOhA cmavo with rafsi, in that it would fill up one of the places
greater than x1 with the sumti in question. It would be strange to
interpret 'donta'a' as 'You talk to x1 about x2', rather than 'x1
talks to you about x2'. But in general I would like to avoid using
'zi'o' at all for anything; it is too clumsy.

> Adding new gismu is an even bigger change to the baseline.

Well, I'm not sure that it's bigger; at least it doesn't invalidate
anyone's usage or require that anyone relearn anything, which seems to
be historically the reason for the baseline in the first place. At any
rate, this doesn't have to be a baseline change. A new gismu could
easily come into use without being on the official lists, and it
should be much easier to get people to use it, since it doesn't
contradict anything official.

mu'o mi'e .adam.