From arosta@uclan.ac.uk Wed Feb 21 09:08:45 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: arosta@uclan.ac.uk X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_0_4); 21 Feb 2001 17:08:41 -0000 Received: (qmail 51450 invoked from network); 21 Feb 2001 17:08:27 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by l9.egroups.com with QMQP; 21 Feb 2001 17:08:27 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO com1.uclan.ac.uk) (193.61.255.3) by mta3 with SMTP; 21 Feb 2001 18:09:31 -0000 Received: from gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk by com1.uclan.ac.uk with SMTP (Mailer); Wed, 21 Feb 2001 16:51:46 +0000 Received: from DI1-Message_Server by gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk with Novell_GroupWise; Wed, 21 Feb 2001 17:08:16 +0000 Message-Id: X-Mailer: Novell GroupWise 5.5.2 Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 17:08:00 +0000 To: lojbab , lojban Subject: RE: [lojban] RE:su'u Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline From: And Rosta 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=20 #frequent usages (and at this point, all fu'ivla are relatively more=20 #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=20 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=20 between phonological/orthographic words and dictionary words. --And.