From jjllambias@hotmail.com Fri Sep 06 15:45:47 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: jjllambias@hotmail.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_1_0_1); 6 Sep 2002 22:45:43 -0000 Received: (qmail 29491 invoked from network); 6 Sep 2002 22:45:42 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.218) by m9.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 6 Sep 2002 22:45:42 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO hotmail.com) (216.33.241.41) by mta3.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 6 Sep 2002 22:45:46 -0000 Received: from mail pickup service by hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC; Fri, 6 Sep 2002 15:45:45 -0700 Received: from 200.69.6.29 by lw8fd.law8.hotmail.msn.com with HTTP; Fri, 06 Sep 2002 22:45:45 GMT To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Bcc: Subject: RE: [lojban] termsets Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2002 22:45:45 +0000 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Message-ID: X-OriginalArrivalTime: 06 Sep 2002 22:45:45.0979 (UTC) FILETIME=[237294B0:01C255F7] From: "Jorge Llambias" X-Originating-IP: [200.69.6.29] X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=6071566 X-Yahoo-Profile: jjllambias2000 la and cusku di'e >This sort of coordination is very normal >and unmarked in English. It's a shame that GA is not >already equivalent to "nu'i GA" (so that all coordination >is termset coordination), but the result is just averagely >lojbanically clunky, and not downright unusable. I agree that the concept behind termsets makes sense, but I don't think that its Lojban implementation is just averagely clunky. At least I find it very difficult to make it work with the rest of the sentence structure. The reason plain GA won't suffice seems to be that GA...GI... doesn't have a terminator, so {ge ko'a gi ko'e ko'i} would have {ko'e ko'i} as a termset. I don't think that would be a bad thing though. You could always recover the present reading with {ge ko'a gi ko'e vau ko'i}. But I guess that will have to wait until the deadline ends (there is no danger of termsets becoming popular in the meantime, so I expect it will be easy to reform them away). But anyway, one trick to avoid termsets is this: ko'a dunda ko'e ko'i gi'e co'e ko'o ko'u ko'a gives ko'e to ko'i and (does) ko'o to ko'u I suppose {go'i} won't work there, and I don't know whether there is something more precise than {co'e}, but if there isn't there very well could be. Compare with the equivalent "afterthought" termset form: ko'a dunda ko'e ce'e ko'i pe'e je ko'o ce'e ko'u which is longer and also requires some forethought for the first {ce'e}. The forethought form with {co'e} is just as long as the forethought termset form with {nu'i}, if the {nu'u}s can be elided, but the co'e form is more flexible, so you can say things like: ge ko'a prami ko'e gi ko'i ko'o co'e instead of the fixed order required by nu'i: nu'i ge ko'a ko'e gi ko'i ko'u prami which can also be replicated with co'e as: ge ko'a ko'e co'e gi ko'i ko'o prami So, my conclusion is that termsets can always be substituted advantageously by another form. mu'o mi'e xorxes _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com