From lojbab@lojban.org Mon Aug 13 00:00:37 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: lojbab@lojban.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_3_1); 13 Aug 2001 07:00:36 -0000 Received: (qmail 27542 invoked from network); 13 Aug 2001 07:00:36 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by l7.egroups.com with QMQP; 13 Aug 2001 07:00:36 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO stmpy-1.cais.net) (205.252.14.71) by mta2 with SMTP; 13 Aug 2001 07:00:36 -0000 Received: from user.lojban.org (ppp12.net-A.cais.net [205.252.61.12]) by stmpy-1.cais.net (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id f7D70Y101109 for ; Mon, 13 Aug 2001 03:00:34 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <4.3.2.7.2.20010813024609.00d92100@pop.cais.com> X-Sender: vir1036@pop.cais.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.2 Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 02:58:45 -0400 To: Subject: Re: [lojban] {kai'i} In-Reply-To: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" At 09:46 PM 8/10/01 -0400, Invent Yourself wrote: > > It is redundant only in a version of Lojban where you are not permitted > > to elide "ce'u". > >To justify a new cmavo (ka) only to avoid the confusion from eliding >another one (ce'u) seems wasteful and actually un-Lojbanic. Actually, that sounds VERY Lojbanic. There are many places in the language where for *grammatical* reasons we have things done a certain way, including introducing new cmavo, in order to allow ellipsis and elision. All of the elidable terminators fit this to some extent. It is also VERY "Lojbanic" to allow ellipsis whenever possible. Ellipsis of ce'u is not really different from ellipsis of tense and number; it just happens to be one that is uniquely meaningful to Lojban. > It sticks out >from the language at a weird angle; is there any other such case of such >redundancy in the cmavo? Plenty. Some of the language exists, you recall, for historical backwards compatibility. TLI Loglan doesn't have ce'u or du'u or tu'a or jai, and doesn't give a fig about sumti-raising, but it does have the equivalent of "ka" for its usefulness in tanru-like modification of a predicate per your comment about lujvo below. It also has the same grammar in TLI Loglan as their equivalent of nu, so that is what we did as well. >It seems a lot more elegant to actually ditch ka, >with the exception of lujvo. We never attempted to design Lojban "elegantly". On the contrary, as a language workbench, we put a lot of expressive tools into the language which were of uncertain usability, with the expectation that some would be more useful than others and that this could differ based on one's native language. lojbab -- lojbab lojbab@lojban.org 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