Subject: Re: [lojban] selma'o considered harmful

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 00:30:49 -0400

At 03:57 PM 8/13/01 -0400, John Cowan wrote:
>Nick NICHOLAS wrote:
> >>From the Wiki: http://nuzban.wiw.org/wiki/index.php?cmene . Is there any
> > official verdict on the usage of CMENE and selma'o, John?
>
>It's certainly bogus to call CMENE a selma'o, though the internal
>code of the parser does (as well as BRIVLA). In Lojban, a better
>term such as vlalei would be preferred. Then there are 3 vlalei
>and 120+ selma'o.

It is bogus from the standpoint of rigorous tanru/dikyjvo etymology, but 
this is a case where a lujvo through usage does not strictly mean what its 
etymology suggests. selma'o was coined as a word for "lexeme" when dikyjvo 
did not exist and it is thoroughly ensconced in our literature with that 
meaning. I think it is now a little too late to do to selma'o what we did 
to kunbri (now selbri, and the former is long forgotten) and le'avla (now 
fu'ivla, but you can still find the former sometimes).

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