[lojban] Re: Regular vs dictionary lujvo

[Adam D. Lopresto]

There is a very long (but informative) paper on this at
http://www.lojban.org/files/papers/lujvopap.3

It details the gasnu-based pattern, in particular.

On Thu, 4 Jan 2007, Cyril Slobin wrote:

> coi rodo
>
> We all know that:
> 1) Tanru have many possible meanings and you must guess the right one
> from context.
> 2) Lujvo have one meaning and you must to look up it from dictionary.
>
> But in reality we have a class of a "regular" lujvo which meaning
> anyone can guess. I will not bother to dig into the dictionary for a
> lujvo starting with sel- or tol- or ending with -mau or -gau. And if a
> dictionary will give a different meaning than I have guessed, I will
> conclude that this dictionary is Bad, Wrong and Evil.
>
> But there is a trap. Consider a lujvo "pofygau". Almost anyone will
> understand it as "to break (agentive)", and this meaning is listed in
> gimste. But someone in lojban_ru community noted that other possible
> meaning is "to be a broken agent", "to be unable to cause something".
> I believe that most of the sane lojbanists will prefer the first
> meaning over the second. Why? Because the "something+gau" pattern is
> much more recognizable than "pof+something". "-gau" is more affixish
> than "pof-".
>
> So, I conclude, it will be a Good Thing to have a list of common lujvo
> patterns that need not be listed in dictionary, and to have a rule to
> resolve conflicts when a given lujvo match two or more patterns.
>
> For the second goal I suggest the following two rules:
> 1) Rafsi derived from cmavo is more affixish (has a higher priority)
> than rafsi derived from gismu.
> 2) Unless the first rule gives an answer, rafsi at the end of lujvo is
> more affixish (has a higher priority) than rafsi at te beginning of
> lujvo.
>
> Any comments?
>
> ... Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away ...
>
>

--
Adam Lopresto
http://cec.wustl.edu/~adam/

You see things and say 'Why?'; but I dream things that never were and I
say 'Why not?'

--George Bernard Shaw

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[komfo,amonan]

I think on the contrary that eventually there ought to be an unabridged dictionary that includes these lujvo.

Small benefit: Inclusion of such lujvo would more easily allow beginners to read or get the gist of texts that would otherwise be above their level.

Larger benefit: There are some ambiguities with, e.g., {tol-}. {tolpa'i}: some might translate this as "x1 hates ...", others as "x1 is indifferent toward ...". And what of something like {tolge'u}? Perhaps inclusion of the obvious lujvo would serve to imply rejection of the excluded.

mu'o mi'e komfo,amonan

[Jorge Llambías]

On 1/4/07, Cyril Slobin <slo...@ice.ru> wrote:
>
> For the second goal I suggest the following two rules:
> 1) Rafsi derived from cmavo is more affixish (has a higher priority)
> than rafsi derived from gismu.

This might work for some cases, such as tol- or sel- but I don't think
it will work for all cmavo with rafsi. For example, I think pav- tends to
work more like a gismu. {pavyseljirna} is (a kind of) {seljirna be
lo pa mei}, but I would say that {pavgau} is not a kind of {gasnu be
lo pa mei} but {x1 gasnu be lo nu x2 pa mei}, "x1 unifies x2" i.e. more
like an ordinary gau-lujvo.

> 2) Unless the first rule gives an answer, rafsi at the end of lujvo is
> more affixish (has a higher priority) than rafsi at te beginning of
> lujvo.

For example, malgau: {x1 gasnu lo nu x2 mabla}? I tend to agree. In
general I think rafsi from gismu should never behave like true prefixes,
but unfortunately some of them do seem to.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

[Cyril Slobin]

coi rodo

We all know that:
1) Tanru have many possible meanings and you must guess the right one
from context.
2) Lujvo have one meaning and you must to look up it from dictionary.

But in reality we have a class of a "regular" lujvo which meaning
anyone can guess. I will not bother to dig into the dictionary for a
lujvo starting with sel- or tol- or ending with -mau or -gau. And if a
dictionary will give a different meaning than I have guessed, I will
conclude that this dictionary is Bad, Wrong and Evil.

But there is a trap. Consider a lujvo "pofygau". Almost anyone will
understand it as "to break (agentive)", and this meaning is listed in
gimste. But someone in lojban_ru community noted that other possible
meaning is "to be a broken agent", "to be unable to cause something".
I believe that most of the sane lojbanists will prefer the first
meaning over the second. Why? Because the "something+gau" pattern is
much more recognizable than "pof+something". "-gau" is more affixish
than "pof-".

So, I conclude, it will be a Good Thing to have a list of common lujvo
patterns that need not be listed in dictionary, and to have a rule to
resolve conflicts when a given lujvo match two or more patterns.

For the second goal I suggest the following two rules:

1) Rafsi derived from cmavo is more affixish (has a higher priority)
than rafsi derived from gismu.

2) Unless the first rule gives an answer, rafsi at the end of lujvo is
more affixish (has a higher priority) than rafsi at te beginning of
lujvo.

Any comments?

... Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away ...

--
Cyril Slobin <lj user="slobin">