Subject: RE: [lojban] RE:su'u

From: And Rosta <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 17:08:00 +0000

Lojbab:
#At 11:41 PM 02/19/2001 +0000, Jorge Llambias wrote:
#>la and cusku di'e
#> >I wonder why we have all this faffing about with fu'ivla, then,
#> >when we could simply make a zei lujvo.
#>
#>I suppose because zei lujvo are not morphologically one word,
#>so they don't feel right.
#
#Zipf. People tend to want the shortest word they can find for more 
#frequent usages (and at this point, all fu'ivla are relatively more 
#frequent usages).
#
#Or maybe people are just lazy typists.

I don't think it can be Zipf, because English shows very little
inclination to contract partially idiomatic expressions into a
single phonological word, and in general acronymy and other
similar abbreiviatory devices seem to be a feature of governments 
and official bodies rather than everyday colloquial language.

Nor can it be laziness, because intellectually, rather than digitally,
zei lujvo are the easier option.

So I think Jorge's explanation is the best: X zei Y doesn't feel like
a single word. People want a clear 1-to-1 correspondence 
between phonological/orthographic words and dictionary words.

--And.