Subject: Re: [lojban] djataurte

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2001 15:42:40 -0400

At 09:59 AM 04/26/2001 -0700, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
>On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 02:16:09AM -0400, Bob LeChevalier (lojbab) wrote:
> > At 11:19 PM 04/25/2001 -0400, Pierre Abbat wrote:
> > >I found "djataurte" in translations/alice/NEW_WORDS meaning "tart". 
> This is a
> > >fu'ivla, but it's a type 4,
> >
> > If it has a rafsi in the front, it is clearly intended to be a type 3.
> >
> > This is precisely the sort of word that MUST be a type 3 and not a type
> > 4. After all, "tart" has three completely distinct meanings in English (a
> > food, a flavor property, and a slang description of a woman with loose
> > morals) and who knows how many its Lojban counterpart might have in all 
> the
> > world's languages. How can we say at this stage of usage which of the
> > multiple meanings should apply to the type 4 wordform - only 1 is allowed.
> >
> > >so why does it begin with "dja"? Type 3 fu'ivla
> > >shouldn't be made from CCV or CVV rafsi anyway.
> >
> > There is nothing illegal about using them - it just can't be assumed that
> > the fu'ivla will be well-formed when one works with those rafsi.
>
>As someone who knows very little about fu'ivla formation:
>
>Is djataurte legal as it stands or not? If not, what do we do with it?
>It's supposed to refer to the food, btw.

There is nothing that I can see "illegal" about it, but we don't have any 
official standards of legality other than the word be a brivla, not a gismu 
or a lujvo, and not a word that breaks up into shorter components under 
specific conditions. I don't see a reason it would break up, but this is 
still an art - we have no formal algorithm to test fu'ivla (something 
someone programmically inclined might be able to develop, but the algorithm 
will be tricky to develop and even harder to prove correct). So you either 
have to make them with CVCr[lojbanized form] or take your chances.

As for whether it is a "good" fu'ivla - I think it could be better. It is 
not clear why you turned "tart" into "taurta" other then to make it a 
non-lujvo when prefixed by the "dja". Generally the standard has been to 
doctor the attachment to the rafsi rather than the borrowed portion, and as 
Pierre said, not to use CCV rafsi. I would thus be inclined to make it 
"nabrtarte" if I were inventing the word myself (the -e ending based solely 
on the etymology in my dictionary), since "bread" is more specific than 
"food" as to the meaning. "rut" or "tit" or even "tis" would also be 
useful prefixes, and "tis" might be superior in some contexts because there 
will likely be few fu'ivla based on the concept of "tisna" (though people 
may not realize then that it is a kind of food). So maybe the proper thing 
to do is make a lujvo, based on grute-tisna-nanba (rutytisnanba or maybe 
just tisnanba).

lojbab
--
lojbab [email-masked]
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