'tesete' and cmavo cluster rules

[Álvaro Vallejo]

Hi,

Three questions:
1) I found another word that I am not able to make a sense: "tesete". Here the context:
.i mi ba tesete cpedu lo prenu lenu klama gi'e cpacu le selponse be cy. li'u

which is translated as:
"I'll get someone to come by for his things."

Could someone explain this term?

2) I've not been able to find the rules that governs a) clustering cmavo, e.g. .ibabo, .iku'i, leza'i, etc... b) omitting the initial period (e.g. i, ibabo, iku'i). Are these rules written somewhere or do they come from usage (I don't think so).

Thanks in advance.

[Miles Forster]

Hello

Am 09.05.2012 14:55, schrieb Álvaro Vallejo:

Hi,

Three questions:
1) I found another word that I am not able to make a sense: "tesete". Here the context:
.i mi ba tesete cpedu lo prenu lenu klama gi'e cpacu le selponse be cy. li'u

which is translated as:
"I'll get someone to come by for his things."

Could someone explain this term?

1) {te se te} is three words. You probably know what {se} and {te} do individually. Here's what happens in the case of {te se te}:
broda = x1 broda x2 x3
te broda = x3 broda x2 x1
se te broda = x2 broda x3 x1
te se te broda = x1 broda x3 x2
In short: the x2 and x3 places are switched. This is always the case when you have SEi SEj SEi: The xi and xj places are exchanged

2) I've not been able to find the rules that governs a) clustering cmavo, e.g. .ibabo, .iku'i, leza'i, etc... b) omitting the initial period (e.g. i, ibabo, iku'i). Are these rules written somewhere or do they come from usage (I don't think so).

cmavo can always be clustered, but many prefer not to do this because it obscures the constructs, for example you thought tesete was one word. I personally discourage clustering for this reason.
The initial period can never be omitted before vowels (if they are phonetically vowels. {ui} = [wi], so no dot is necessary).

Hope this helps,
mu'o mi'e la selpa'i

-- 
.i da xamgu ganse fi no na'ebo lo risna 
.i lo vajrai cu nonselji'u lo kanla

[Jonathan Jones]

It's not /a/ word, it's three.

se switched the x1 and the x2, te switches the x1 and the xe

so, perform each switch in sequence:

ko'a cpedu ko'e ko'i

ko'i te cpedu ko'e ko'a

ko'e tese cpedu ko'i ko'a

ko'a tesete cpedu ko'i ko'e

Honestly, that seems like a lot of work just to avoid a kei.

Without using SE to swap places, the same bridi would be:

{.i mi ba cpedu lenu klama gi'e cpacu le selponse be cy. kei lo prenu}
"I will request 'coming and getting his things' from someone."
(^ Is a bit of a mash-up between literal and colloquial, because the word order isn't normal for English, making it read funny.)

As far as I know, the only rule about cmavo clustering is that you can't do it if the combination takes the form of a gismu, lujvo, fu'ivla, or other predicate-word (brivla), but otherwise it's personal choice whether or not to cluster them. Some clusters are fairly common, and all clusters where the second word modifies the first, such as in .uicai or .iepei,, are standard practice.

As far as omitting denpabu, when in text there is any combination of ' ' and '.', it is permissible to omit all of '.' and ' ' except one, such as {la.djan. .uisai xruti .i mi mutce gleki} could be written as {la djan uisai i mi mutce gleki}, {la.djan.uisai xruti.i mi mutce gleki}, etc. I typically only omit either when there is a semantic(?) link between them, and I always favor '.' over ' ', so my rendering would be {la.djan.uisai xruti .i mi mutce gleki}. My reason for choosing to omit ' ' and not '.' is because when speaking, those pauses /must/ /still/ /be/ /"said"/, and keeping the '.' in the written serves as a reminder of when you /must/ pause.

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--
mu'o mi'e .aionys.

.i.e'ucai ko cmima lo pilno be denpa bu .i doi.luk. mi patfu do zo'o
(Come to the Dot Side! Luke, I am your father. :D )

[Miles Forster]

>
> .ui does require the initial pause, there are no exceptions to the
> vowel initial is preceded by pause rule.

First of all, stop calling it a pause. Second of all, this is not an
exception. A Lojban word may not begin in a vowel (spelling doesn't
matter here). A word that would begin in a vowel needs a denpa bu before
it. ui does not begin in a vowel. Therefore, no denpa bu is needed.

[ianek]

2) I've not been able to find the rules that governs a) clustering cmavo, e.g. .ibabo, .iku'i, leza'i, etc... b) omitting the initial period (e.g. i, ibabo, iku'i). Are these rules written somewhere or do they come from usage (I don't think so).

I can't find where they are explicitly stated in CLL, but they're hinted implicitly in many places, the first is http://dag.github.com/cll/2/8/. In http://dag.github.com/cll/14/6/ (at the end) is written about compunds like {na.a}.

[Jonathan Jones]

.ui does require the initial pause, there are no exceptions to the vowel initial is preceded by pause rule.
 

Hope this helps,

mu'o mi'e la selpa'i

-- 
.i da xamgu ganse fi no na'ebo lo risna 
.i lo vajrai cu nonselji'u lo kanla

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[Jonathan Jones]

On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 7:41 AM, Jonathan Jones <eye...@gmail.com> wrote:

It's not /a/ word, it's three.

se switched the x1 and the x2, te switches the x1 and the xe

se switches .... and the x3

I really need to proofread better.
 

[Jonathan Jones]

On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 7:51 AM, Miles Forster <m...@plasmatix.com> wrote:

.ui does require the initial pause, there are no exceptions to the vowel initial is preceded by pause rule.

First of all, stop calling it a pause. Second of all, this is not an exception. A Lojban word may not begin in a vowel (spelling doesn't matter here). A word that would begin in a vowel needs a denpa bu before it. ui does not begin in a vowel. Therefore, no denpa bu is needed.

First of all, it /is/ a pause, so that's what I'm calling it. It is the textual representation of a mandatory pause in a Lojban speech stream. Secondly, .ui /does/ begin in a vowel. .ubu is a vowel. It is not a "sometimes-consonant" like English 'y'. .abu, .ebu, .ibu, .obu, .ubu, and .ybu are /always/ vowels. They are never /not/ vowels.

--
.i da xamgu ganse fi no na'ebo lo risna
.i lo vajrai cu nonselji'u lo kanla

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[Jonathan Jones]

On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 8:35 AM, Jonathan Jones <eye...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 7:51 AM, Miles Forster <m...@plasmatix.com> wrote:

.ui does require the initial pause, there are no exceptions to the vowel initial is preceded by pause rule.

First of all, stop calling it a pause. Second of all, this is not an exception. A Lojban word may not begin in a vowel (spelling doesn't matter here). A word that would begin in a vowel needs a denpa bu before it. ui does not begin in a vowel. Therefore, no denpa bu is needed.

First of all, it /is/ a pause, so that's what I'm calling it. It is the textual representation of a mandatory pause in a Lojban speech stream.

I mean, seriously, why do you think the Lojban name of '.' is DENPA bu? "denpa bu" in English is "pause character".

[Pierre Abbat]

On Wednesday, May 09, 2012 09:41:26 Jonathan Jones wrote:
> As far as omitting denpabu, when in text there is any combination of ' '
> and '.', it is permissible to omit all of '.' and ' ' except one, such as
> {la.djan. .uisai xruti .i mi mutce gleki} could be written as {la djan
> uisai i mi mutce gleki}, {la.djan.uisai xruti.i mi mutce gleki}, etc. I
> typically only omit either when there is a semantic(?) link between them,
> and I always favor '.' over ' ', so my rendering would be {la.djan.uisai
> xruti .i mi mutce gleki}. My reason for choosing to omit ' ' and not '.' is
> because when speaking, those pauses /must/ /still/ /be/ /"said"/, and
> keeping the '.' in the written serves as a reminder of when you /must/
> pause.

If a cmevla is followed by a word beginning with a vowel, I omit one of the
denpa bu; which one is arbitrary. I omit the space only within a compound
cmene (e.g. "misisipis.rirx", "kot.divu�r") or cmavo cluster (e.g. "na.e",
"te.u"). So I'd write "la .djan. uisai xruti .i mi mutce gleki".

Btw, it's "denpa bu", not "denpabu", which is a zi'evla. The proper brivla is
"depybu'i".

Pierre
--
I believe in Yellow when I'm in Sweden and in Black when I'm in Wales.

[Jonathan Jones]

On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 8:50 AM, Pierre Abbat <ph...@phma.optus.nu> wrote:

On Wednesday, May 09, 2012 09:41:26 Jonathan Jones wrote:
> As far as omitting denpabu, when in text there is any combination of ' '
> and '.', it is permissible to omit all of '.' and ' ' except one, such as
> {la.djan. .uisai xruti .i mi mutce gleki} could be written as {la djan
> uisai i mi mutce gleki}, {la.djan.uisai xruti.i mi mutce gleki}, etc. I
> typically only omit either when there is a semantic(?) link between them,
> and I always favor '.' over ' ', so my rendering would be {la.djan.uisai
> xruti .i mi mutce gleki}. My reason for choosing to omit ' ' and not '.' is
> because when speaking, those pauses /must/ /still/ /be/ /"said"/, and
> keeping the '.' in the written serves as a reminder of when you /must/
> pause.

If a cmevla is followed by a word beginning with a vowel, I omit one of the
denpa bu; which one is arbitrary. I omit the space only within a compound

cmene (e.g. "misisipis.rirx", "kot.divuár") or cmavo cluster (e.g. "na.e",

"te.u"). So I'd write "la .djan. uisai xruti .i mi mutce gleki".

Btw, it's "denpa bu", not "denpabu", which is a zi'evla. The proper brivla is
"depybu'i".

Pierre
--
I believe in Yellow when I'm in Sweden and in Black when I'm in Wales.

I have a tendency to do that. I'm trying to break the habit. It's because usually when I type bu, it's immediately after a lerfu, not a valsi, and I don't space them- which is where the bad habit of "denpabu" comes from.

[Álvaro Vallejo]

Thank you very much to all.

All this has been an excellent Lojban lesson.

cmavo clusters should be analyzed formally somewhere (e.g. CLL or Lojban for Beginners or sort of). I'll summarize all this discussion to reuse it somewhere in the future.

.u'onai
I already had the hunch tesete was te+se+te but I was coward trying to analyze it as a bunch of conversions and trying to find some meaning.

mu'o mi'e la .albaros

[Álvaro Vallejo]

.uesai

- "The initial period can never be omitted before vowels (if they are phonetically vowels. {ui} = [wi], so no dot is necessary). "
- "ui does not begin in a vowel. Therefore, no denpa bu is needed."

Well... I am really shocked! How is it that "u" is not a vowel? It IS a vowel or I should start learning again Lojban from zero: it's name is indeed ybu, isn't it?
(Chapter 1 of Lojban for beginners, Chapter 2 of CLL)...

[Michael Turniansky]

  They are talked about in the CLL here:  http://dag.github.com/cll/4/2/ 

  But basically, the rule about parsing is that if you can take a CVV (CV'V) or, if not, a CV off the front end of a "word", leaving something that is still a word, then it DOES FALL OFF.  Repeat until you can't.   That's the whole reason why there exists the hyphen rules about making lujvo and fu'ivla.  For example misespati -> "mi te spati".  Unambiguously.

  Aionys says, " As far as I know, the only rule about cmavo clustering is that you can't do it if the combination takes the form of a gismu, lujvo, fu'ivla, or other predicate-word (brivla) "

  But how can it ever?  It can't.

                                               --gejyspa

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[Michael Turniansky]

  It is, and it always does require a pause in front of it.  Miles is wrong.

        --gejyspa

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[Pierre Abbat]

On Wednesday 09 May 2012 20:11:48 Michael Turniansky wrote:
> Aionys says, " As far as I know, the only rule about cmavo clustering is
> that you can't do it if the combination takes the form of a gismu, lujvo,
> fu'ivla, or other predicate-word (brivla) "
> But how can it ever? It can't.

It can if there's a Cy in it, e.g. "lomymoi" is a brivla, "lomy.moi" or "lo my
moi" is three cmavo.

Pierre
--
ve ka'a ro klaji la .romas. se jmaji

[MorphemeAddict]

On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 8:10 PM, Álvaro Vallejo <aval...@gmail.com> wrote:

.uesai

- "The initial period can never be omitted before vowels (if they are phonetically vowels. {ui} = [wi], so no dot is necessary). "

- "ui does not begin in a vowel. Therefore, no denpa bu is needed."

Well... I am really shocked! How is it that "u" is not a vowel? It IS a vowel or I should start learning again Lojban from zero: it's name is indeed ybu, isn't it?

No, {ybu} is the name of the letter "y". The name of the letter "u" is "ubu". And similarly for the other vowels. The consonants are just named by the consonant itself plus "y": by, cy, dy, ...

stevo

 

(Chapter 1 of Lojban for beginners, Chapter 2 of CLL)...

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[Jonathan Jones]

It IS a vowel, always. It's name is ".ubu". ".ybu" is the name of another vowel, "y".
 

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[Miles Forster]

.y bu is not "u". .u bu is. And the u in ui is not pronounced [u] but [w] which *is* a consonant. Some here seem to lack reading comprehension. It's annoying to argue with people who won't listen to what the other person is saying.
Whether or not something is a vowel depends on the way it's pronounced, not the way it's written.

mu'o

[Michael Eaton]

Vowels are such by convention, not pronunciation: to say that a letter is a vowel because it is a 'vowel sound' causes all sorts of exponentially and rapidly increasing problems. Is that to say U can't possibly be a vowel in English either, because it's pronounced as W in words such as 'quick'?

 

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[Miles Forster]

Again, you did not read properly. I never said <u> is never a vowel. It is just not a vowel when another vowel follows, as in {ui}.

[Michael Eaton]

No, no, I read it. I just don't understand the relevance. {.ubu} doesn't become something completely different simply because there is another vowel there, surely? That would mean {ui} would have to be a letter all of its own, which, were that the case, would be a reasonable consonant. But it's not, it's a U with an I next to it.

[Jonathan Jones]

On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 4:04 AM, Miles Forster <m...@plasmatix.com> wrote:

.y bu is not "u". .u bu is. And the u in ui is not pronounced [u] but [w] which *is* a consonant. Some here seem to lack reading comprehension. It's annoying to argue with people who won't listen to what the other person is saying.
Whether or not something is a vowel depends on the way it's pronounced, not the way it's written.

I'm sorry, Miles, but you're wrong. There are no consonants in the Lojban word ".ui". Regardless of it's pronunciation as the leading vowel of a diphthong, u is still a vowel.

And just so we're clear, a diphthong is a sound represented by a combination of two vowels. In Lojban, the diphthong "ui" is pronounced as in the English word "we", but that does not suddenly make the "u" in it a consonant.
 

--

[Michael Turniansky]

  Not to mention that the CLL specifically SAYS that "uV" and "iV" require a pause before them. (Chapter 4.2)  You are right, Miles, "Some here seem to lack reading comprehension"

       --gejyspa

[Miles Forster]

.u'i

[Jorge Llambías]

On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 4:36 PM, Michael Turniansky
<mturn...@gmail.com> wrote:
>   Not to mention that the CLL specifically SAYS that "uV" and "iV" require a
> pause before them. (Chapter 4.2)  You are right, Miles, "Some here seem to
> lack reading comprehension"

camxes agrees with Miles though. camxes doesn't require a glottal stop
or pause in front of semi-consonantal i/u.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

[Jonathan Jones]

That's not true. camxes doesn't allow there to not be a pause, it merely allows denpa bu to be elided.

{abu e cy i o uu i zo ybu} parses perfectly fine in camxes for this reason. Notice that each vowel appears as an initial letter, and denpa bu does not appear anywhere.

[Álvaro Vallejo]

Thanks for your opinion, but it is either very surprising to me or wrong.

Yes, it is .u bu, sure. My fault.

Probably I lack reading comprehension, but here are my arguments:
1. (CLL, Chapter 3): "Lojban is designed so that any properly spoken Lojban utterance can be uniquely transcribed in writing, and any properly written Lojban can be spoken so as to be uniquely reproduced by another person. As a consequence, the standard Lojban orthography must assign to each distinct sound, or phoneme, a unique letter or symbol."

My reading of this is that there is only one way to pronounce u, which is (among others) the plain Spanish "u".

2. It may be that speakers of other languages can pronounce it as "w" (and I can forgive them), but I can/do clearly pronounce it as plain "u": .ui = "u" + "i"

Anyway, this is just my humble opinion.

mu'o mi'e la .albaros

On Thursday, May 10, 2012 5:04:23 AM UTC-5, Miles Forster wrote:

.y bu is not "u". .u bu is. And the u in ui is not pronounced [u] but [w] which *is* a consonant. Some here seem to lack reading comprehension. It's annoying to argue with people who won't listen to what the other person is saying.
Whether or not something is a vowel depends on the way it's pronounced, not the way it's written.

mu'o

Am 10.05.2012 02:12, schrieb Michael Turniansky:

  It is, and it always does require a pause in front of it.  Miles is wrong.

        --gejyspa

On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 8:10 PM, Álvaro Vallejo <> wrote:

.uesai

- "The initial period can never be omitted before vowels (if they are phonetically vowels. {ui} = [wi], so no dot is necessary). "

- "ui does not begin in a vowel. Therefore, no denpa bu is needed."

Well... I am really shocked! How is it that "u" is not a vowel? It IS a vowel or I should start learning again Lojban from zero: it's name is indeed ybu, isn't it?
(Chapter 1 of Lojban for beginners, Chapter 2 of CLL)...

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[Jorge Llambías]

On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 7:19 PM, Jonathan Jones <eye...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 3:44 PM, Jorge Llambías <jjlla...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> camxes agrees with Miles though. camxes doesn't require a glottal stop
>> or pause in front of semi-consonantal i/u.
>

> That's not true. camxes doesn't allow there to not be a pause, it merely
> allows denpa bu to be elided.

You should trust me on this one, I did the morphology section of camxes,

> {abu e cy i o uu i zo ybu} parses perfectly fine in camxes for this reason.
> Notice that each vowel appears as an initial letter, and denpa bu does not
> appear anywhere.

Irrelevant to what we were discussing.

"abu e cy i ouu i zo ybu" also parses correctly, since camxes does not
require a space in front of "uu".

[Jonathan Jones]

In that case, I would submit that in this matter, camxes is wrong, as it disagrees with the CLL in a matter that has not been changed since it's publication. (IIRC, it also disagrees with CLL in the matters of Dot-Side and xorlo, but those are changes that have occured since the CLL was published, so they don't count.)

[Jonathan Jones]

On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 4:22 PM, Álvaro Vallejo <aval...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks for your opinion, but it is either very surprising to me or wrong.

Wrong.
 

Yes, it is .u bu, sure. My fault.

Probably I lack reading comprehension, but here are my arguments:
1. (CLL, Chapter 3): "Lojban is designed so that any properly spoken Lojban utterance can be uniquely transcribed in writing, and any properly written Lojban can be spoken so as to be uniquely reproduced by another person. As a consequence, the standard Lojban orthography must assign to each distinct sound, or phoneme, a unique letter or symbol."

My reading of this is that there is only one way to pronounce u, which is (among others) the plain Spanish "u".

Well, yes and no. Lojban has diphthongs, which as I said earlier, are a unique pronunciation represented by two adjacent vowels. So, .ubu is always pronounced as in the word "flute" if it's not part of a diphthong.

The complete list of Lojban diphthongs and there pronunciations is:

"ai" - as in "aye"
"au" - as in "wow"
"ei" - as in "tray"
"oi" - as in "toy"

"ia" - as in "Maya"
"ie" - as in "yes"
"ii" - as in "yeesh"
"io" - as in "yo"
"iu" - as in "you"

"ua" - as in "what"
"ue" - as in "wet"
"ui" - as in "we"
"uo" - as in "whoa"
"uu" - as in "woo"

2. It may be that speakers of other languages can pronounce it as "w" (and I can forgive them), but I can/do clearly pronounce it as plain "u": .ui = "u" + "i"

"ui", "u'i", and "u,i" (, the latter of which only appears in cmene, ) are all pronounced differently. "ui" is "we", "u'i" is "oohee", and "u,i" is "oo ee". "u,i" is the one that should be pronounced "u" + "i", as you put it, not "ui".
 

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[Jonathan Jones]

On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 5:01 PM, Jonathan Jones <eye...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 4:22 PM, Álvaro Vallejo <aval...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks for your opinion, but it is either very surprising to me or wrong.

Wrong.
 

Yes, it is .u bu, sure. My fault.

Probably I lack reading comprehension, but here are my arguments:
1. (CLL, Chapter 3): "Lojban is designed so that any properly spoken Lojban utterance can be uniquely transcribed in writing, and any properly written Lojban can be spoken so as to be uniquely reproduced by another person. As a consequence, the standard Lojban orthography must assign to each distinct sound, or phoneme, a unique letter or symbol."

My reading of this is that there is only one way to pronounce u, which is (among others) the plain Spanish "u".

Well, yes and no. Lojban has diphthongs, which as I said earlier, are a unique pronunciation represented by two adjacent vowels. So, .ubu is always pronounced as in the word "flute" if it's not part of a diphthong.

The complete list of Lojban diphthongs and there pronunciations is:

*their
 

[Pierre Abbat]

On Thursday 10 May 2012 18:22:46 Álvaro Vallejo wrote:
> My reading of this is that there is only one way to pronounce u, which is
> (among others) the plain Spanish "u".
>
> 2. It may be that speakers of other languages can pronounce it as "w" (and
> I can forgive them), but I can/do clearly pronounce it as plain "u": .ui =
> "u" + "i"

"ui" is as in "huipil", "ue" is as in "huele". They are both diphthongs. They
can be pronounced as two syllables, which is written "u,i" or "u,e" in
Lojban, but this makes no difference to the identity of a word.

[Jacob Errington]

Miles has point, though. His views on the denpa bu are pretty interesting. 

The approximants in [uV] and [iV], IPA /j/ and /w/, can be consonantal, which frees them of denpa bu requirement as explained in the CLL, which does so because it considers them to be real vowels, which they aren't quite.

When it comes to actually *writing* the denpa bu, I am a bad example. In informal IRC chat, I practically never use it, but in my translations, I do. It depends simply on how hooked you are on audio-visual isomorphism, which Lojban doesn't actually even adhere to so much, says xorxes. I think that in more formal contexts, like translations or any official-ish written work, it's important to put them, but otherwise, in that regard, I see them much like periods, commas or other punctuation in English: elidable when no confusion results.

mu'o mi'e la tsani

[Jonathan Jones]

denpa bu is not punctuation.

[Jacob Errington]

No one, as far as I know ever said it was.

In my post, I said that I consider it to be *like* English punctuation, where simsa3 is that it can be omitted when no confusion results. I never said that denpa bu *is* punctuation.