From iad@MATH.BAS.BG Sat Jul 29 21:40:16 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 17343 invoked from network); 30 Jul 2000 04:40:14 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by m2.onelist.org with QMQP; 30 Jul 2000 04:40:14 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO lnd.internet-bg.net) (212.124.64.2) by mta1 with SMTP; 30 Jul 2000 04:40:12 -0000 Received: from math.bas.bg (ppp62.internet-bg.net [212.124.66.62]) by lnd.internet-bg.net (8.9.3/8.9.0) with ESMTP id HAA31535 for ; Sun, 30 Jul 2000 07:47:47 +0300 Message-ID: <39833AC8.9251644D@math.bas.bg> Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2000 23:12:56 +0300 X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.6 [en] (Win98; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: tertirxu References: <20000729182726.25795.qmail@hotmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Ivan A Derzhanski michael helsem wrote: > >From: "Jorge Llambias" > >If there > >was more regularity in place structures I would be confident > >of knowing more of them. [...] > On the one hand, i want to say that a little irregularity > is good for any artificial language; it gives it "soul"... When I want a soulful artificial language, I turn to Klingon. What I seek in Lojban is not soul, but regularity and consistency. > On the other, > in this particular case, i think that future usage will either > drop or regularize SOME of the offending "idiosyncrasies". That is true. It is regrettable, though, that they will have been there in the first place. The last thing one expects is to see that some sort of arbitrariness which is an exception in natlangs is the rule in Lojban. Which is just the case here. Natlangs generally determine the syntactic marking (position, case, preposition) of an argument on the basis of the semantic relation. Exceptions are common, but for there to be exceptions, there must be rules. > Then the exceptions to absolute regularity would be no more > unlearnable than in any natural language... Don't forget that most natural languages are more regular than the five or six European languages that have become disproportionately prominent on a global scale. -- (Abu t-Tayyib Ahmad Ibn Hussayn al-Mutanabbi) Ivan A Derzhanski H: cplx Iztok bl 91, 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria W: Dept for Math Lx, Inst for Maths & CompSci, Bulg Acad of Sciences