Subject: Re: [lojban] More lexing curiosities - la'i within cmene?

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 06 Jun 2001 01:48:39 -0400

At 08:31 PM 06/05/2001 -0400, Pierre Abbat wrote:
>On Tue, 05 Jun 2001, John Cowan wrote:
> >Richard Curnow scripsit:
> >> The reference grammar makes specific mention of "la", "lai" and "doi"
> >> not being allowed within cmene if preceded by a vowel.
> >>
> >> Why does the same rule not apply to la'i?
> >
> >It does a fortiori, since "la'i" contains "la".
>
>But then why is "lai" listed separately?

The diphthong in ai is different from the vowel in "la" and "la'V"

> Let's take some examples:
>
>baladaron breaks into ba la daron.
>balaidaron breaks into ba lai daron.
>badoidaron breaks into ba doi daron.
>bala'idaron breaks into ba la'i daron.
>bala'udaron cannot break into ba la 'udaron because a word cannot begin with
>y'y. Nor does it break into ba la'u daron because la'u is not special before
>cmene.

It is true that the rule prohibiting "la" is overkill and eliminates some 
things that could cause problems, but the idea was to keep the rules as 
simple as possible. That is also why we use Type 3 fu'ivla. No mistakes 
when doing ad hoc work.

>So the rule should be that if any of the lerpoi "la", "lai", "la'i", or "doi"
>occurs in a word ending in a consonant, with the lerpoi immediately 
>followed by
>a consonant and either preceded by a vowel or at the beginning of the 
>word, the
>lerpoi falls off and becomes a separate cmavo, and anything that preceded the
>lerpoi falls off from it.

Too much rule.

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