Subject: Re: [lojban] selma'o

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 15:45:00 EDT

In a message dated 6/11/2001 2:19:59 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> 
> >> 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.
> 

Well, it wouldn't be a S-W test, since it is not about the language. It 
would be a test of different sorts of heuristics for learning the language, 
Selma'o -- or some similar devices -- are essential for writing a grammar of 
the langauge, else we have at least as many rules as we have words. But they 
are not part of the language; they may not even correspond to a native 
speaker's intuitions about the structure of the language -- though at least 
some usually will. If you don't find them a help in learning the language, 
don't use 'em; if you do, do. But one way or the other you have to learn 
what can go where when in a sentence (which is about all a selma'o is -- some 
are also phonologically defined).