From lojbab@lojban.org Sat Dec 23 15:59:50 2000 Return-Path: X-Sender: lojbab@lojban.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@egroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-6_3_1_3); 23 Dec 2000 23:59:50 -0000 Received: (qmail 84747 invoked from network); 23 Dec 2000 23:59:49 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by l10.egroups.com with QMQP; 23 Dec 2000 23:59:49 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO stmpy-5.cais.net) (205.252.14.75) by mta2 with SMTP; 23 Dec 2000 23:59:48 -0000 Received: from bob.lojban.org (ppp19.net-A.cais.net [205.252.61.19]) by stmpy-5.cais.net (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id eBNNxkN31378 for ; Sat, 23 Dec 2000 18:59:47 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <4.3.2.7.2.20001223184609.00b72ea0@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: lojban/pop.cais.com@127.0.0.1 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.2 Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2000 19:00:43 -0500 To: Subject: Re: [lojban] Cultural fu'ivla In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed From: Robert LeChevalier At 04:27 PM 12/15/2000 -0500, Invent Yourself wrote: >Is there a list of cultural/national/language fu'ivla? No. >Should we work on creating one? IMHO, No. Lists of Lojban words that have not actually seen use are not particularly useful right now, unless there is a gap that one is specifically trying to fill. Since the list of culture names is open-ended and furthermore idiosyncratic to the individual cultures, it is impossible to come up with a complete list of culture words, especially based on the words for the culture used in that culture. Furthermore, it seems to me against the whole concept of "borrowing" to do so in large scale, rather than on an ad hoc basis as needed. For right now, Type III fu'ivla, with the category tag, are sufficient for all such ad hoc usages. Type IV fu'ivla, being Zipfeanly shorter than Type IIIs, are justified when there is enough usage for a particular borrowing that a shorter word seems desirable. The reason for proposing the fu'ivla gismu as an experiment was aimed in particular at the culture words, but the justification was the expected desire to be able to have combining forms for those words into lujvo. There is no similar justification other than Zipf (and therefore usage frequency) for Type IV fu'ivla. If people want to learn how to make type IV fu'ivla, the place I would work would be in a domain in which I were specialized. For example, you xod in talking technically about computer topics in Lojban to other computer types, would use a lot of jargon that is best dealt with using fu'ivla. You would get tired of putting skamr- in front of every other word in your sentences. THAT is when you would feel a Zipfean need to take the most frequent of such fu'ivla and remake them as Type IVs. They would probably be used as Type IVs only by those who use the jargon a lot, but a few such jargon words that make it outside the field to the general language community would become the first general usage Type IV fu'ivla. lojbab -- lojbab lojbab@lojban.org 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