Subject: Re: [lojban] lujvo & tanru

From: "David Twery" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 2000 06:50:47 -0400

----- Original Message -----
From: Invent Yourself <[email-masked]>
Sent: Friday, 25 August 2000 14:39

> Have I said yet that I suspect that "true" Lojbanic style might include
> extremely long tanru? Perhaps it is malglico, or in any case non-Lojbanic,
> to desire small words with poignancy. Perhaps the spirit of Lojban is to
> achieve such shades of meaning not by relying on a huge, historical,
> subtle vocabulary, but by constructing detailed nuanced tanru on the spot.
>
> By "true" of course I mean trying to go where the internal logic
> and flow of the language takes us, rather than trying to aim it in a
> pre-declared direction. The existence and beauty of ke and bo hint and
> encourage us to take tanru in a direction that English doesn't want to.
>
> A tendency in this direction would address the Great Dictionary Problem,
> and give us some SW effects by providing us with a new, rather poetic,
> dynamic skill. In English we pause for a moment and try to recall the One
> Right Word, whereas perhaps in Lojban we should pause for a moment and
> construct a monstrous tanru with kes and bos. Unstacking ke and bo might
> be an easier skill then de-lujvo-izing, recalling rafsi, and figuring out
> the place structure of an unfamiliar lujvo.

I think we do need some "common lujvo". The gismu themselves (individually)
are not adequate for a basic vocabulary. At the very least, tanru are
needed, and that's why lujvo are supposed to be coined -- to prevent adding
gismu *ad hoc* and *ad nauseam*.

(Sure, there's a case to be made for more gismu. Maybe about fifty. Maybe.
And not desperately.)

"Common" lujvo would have common sets of place structures, would be more
easily learned as language patterns, and would be easier to extend or
modify, requiring the dynamic skill you write about. The set of lujvo
composed of a SE lujvo plus the rafsi -- such as selkla, terkla, velkla, and
xemkla, from the places of klama -- is large, and easy to make "on the fly",
and extends the vocabulary to over 3000 brivla.

Using zma or mau (zmadu) as a "suffix" is like using "-er" in English to
augment something: bigger, greener, happier, etc. It's a common usage and
the place structure isn't too hard to figure out.

In the same way, -cau (claxu) is used for "-less", and -ske (saske) tends to
be used for "-ology".

So, what we need is not a set of cast-in-iron lujvo, but a set of both
usable lujvo *and lujvo-making patterns* that most Lojbanists can agree on,
that come from actual Lojban use and not forcing glico into a lojbo mold.

Also, the complexity of the place structures is not the main problem since
the predicate nature of the gismu has to be internalized anyway. I'm sure
that if the gismu list was organized by place structure, we would see
patterns emerge there, too, just as English spelling may appear to be mostly
random, but really does follow well-established patterns.

Following previously-learned (or preceived) language patterns, such lujvo
use would not have to be thought out to the nth detail.

Since you are using lojban a lot in your conversation sessions, it would be
interesting if there was some way of keeping track of the tanru and/or lujvo
you use. If you found a certain one being used periodically, it would be a
good candidate for a lujvo. Recording and "deciphering" conversations may be
difficult to do, but it is one way of establishing what's "common" and what
isn't.

Monstrous tanru would probably be resisted by most users; and besides, every
tanru does have a place structure, that of the final "term" of the tanru.
OTOH, lujvo need not adhere to Zipf's Law. Zipf's Law is more like a "loose,
general rule" anyway -- shorter words are *usually* better and are *usually*
used more often.

This leads back to the bigger problem -- someone must achieve real fluency
in Lojban, the sooner the better.

--d