Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: word for "www" (was: Archive location.)

From: Robert LeChevalier <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Sep 2002 16:25:18 -0400

At 10:40 AM 9/11/02 -0700, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
>On Wed, Sep 11, 2002 at 02:20:09AM +0100, And Rosta wrote:
> > Robin Lee Powell
> > > On Tue, Sep 10, 2002 at 11:00:03PM +0100, And Rosta wrote:
> > > > Robin CA:
> > > > > The whole *point* of lujvo, unless I'm missing something, is
> > > > > that someone should be able to dissect them and figure out what
> > > > > you mean.
> > > >
> > > > Not so. Lujvo are simply a means of creating new words for new
> > > > meanings. However, other things being equal (e.g. word length), a
> > > > candidate lujvo is held to be the more superior the more its
> > > > meaning and place structure can be guessed from its constituent
> > > > parts.
> > >
> > > I can't tell if you're agreeing with me or not. 8)
> >
> > Not. It is not the case that the whole point of lujvo is that someone
> > should be able to dissect them and figure out what you mean. The whole
> > point of lujvo is that they are words formed from parts that have
> > independent meaning within Lojban, but with a meaning that is not
> > equivalent to the sum of their parts. Their dissectablity is not their
> > point.
>
>OK. What is their point?

Their point is to fix a single meaning from among the infinite number of 
possible tanru meanings, and to incorporate a fixed and unitary place 
structure (which tanru do not have, since the selbri place structure is 
that of the final word and other places are attached with be/bei), all of 
these things being associated with Zipfean shortening of expression for 
more common ideas (i.e. we would expect to make lujvo only for ideas that 
we expect will be reused often enough that shortening their expression is 
valuable enough to make us want to learn/figure-out what the intended place 
structure is).

The latter is the main reason for using a usage frequency filter in 
deciding which lujvo to define in the dictionary; greater usage justifies 
the Zipfean shortening.

lojbab

-- 
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org