From jay.kominek@colorado.edu Mon Jun 11 13:07:44 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: kominek@ucsub.colorado.edu X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_1_3); 11 Jun 2001 20:07:44 -0000 Received: (qmail 17550 invoked from network); 11 Jun 2001 19:39:59 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m8.onelist.org with QMQP; 11 Jun 2001 19:39:58 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO ucsub.colorado.edu) (128.138.129.12) by mta1 with SMTP; 11 Jun 2001 19:39:58 -0000 Received: from ucsub.colorado.edu (kominek@ucsub.colorado.edu [128.138.129.12]) by ucsub.colorado.edu (8.11.2/8.11.2/ITS-5.0/student) with ESMTP id f5BJdvU03447 for ; Mon, 11 Jun 2001 13:39:57 -0600 (MDT) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 13:39:57 -0600 (MDT) To: Subject: RE: [lojban] selma'o In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII From: Jay Kominek On Mon, 11 Jun 2001, Craig wrote: > If about half of us agree not to even read the parts of the Book that > mention selma'o, and half of us memorize our selma'o, then can't we watch > the differences and get a very simple Sapir-Whorf test? I have some other > test ideas, but no way to do them without getting better at lojban. first. (Disclaimer: I only took one semester of Psycholinguistics.) If you learn it fluently, then your mind will learn the selma'o whether or not you know the names, since the selma'o control the grammar of the language. You have no need for conscious knowledge of the fact that zu'o is of selma'o NU, but to be able to speak fluently, the language portions of your brain have to figure that fact out. (Of course, your brain won't call it a selma'o, or NU, but it doesn't have to, just as long as it is consistent.) If you can learn Lojban correctly without learning the cmavo->selma'o mapping, more power to you. You can't get rid of them, though, because they're used to describe the language. (Look at the EBNF grammar or something.) - Jay Kominek