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RE: [txeqli] semivowels, Lojbanizing, predicates



Rob:
> How far will re-Loglanizing Ceqli go? Will it adopt the grammar? (I 
> hope so, as it doesn't have much of its own.)

It is probably easier, for a collaborative enterprise conducted by
nonexperts, to take Lojban as a starting point. (I say Lojban rather
than Loglan because it is better documented & easier to learn about,
with more active practitioners.) Dissatisfaction with points of
Lojban grammar can then be formulated as revisions to Lojban grammar.
 
> This would require giving place structures to all the predicates; 

This is more a property of language in general than Lojban in
particular.

> Lojban words for forming "tanru" (Lojban's name for combinations of 
> predicates that would be done with "sa" in Ceqli) would have to act 
> slightly differently. In some cases there is an explicit word that 
> connects the predicates, such as "bo" (put between two words to link 
> them with the highest priority) or "co" (reverse the direction of the 
> link; "barda lunra" is the same as "lunra co barda" except for the 
> place structure - each takes the places of the rightmost predicate). 
> There's also "je", for "and", which is the most explicit way to link 
> an 'adjective' to a 'noun', yet people always leave it out since the 
> vague default connection works almost as well.
> 
> Anyway, I'm thinking that these could replace "sa" where they appear. 
> Then there would be no syllable penalty to use them, and perhaps 
> people wouldn't be afraid to use them and thus say what they mean.
> 
> But the odd thing about words like these in Lojban is that they have 
> affixes. "bo" in a tanru becomes the affix -bor- in a compound word. 
> Other cmavo have affixes too; "mi" (I, me) is -mib-, for example. But 
> Ceqli has no affixes; the predicate _is_ the affix. So essentially, I 
> believe that many pivor will need to have equivalents that are fake 
> predicates, which would mean nothing alone but would be used in 
> compound words. Perhaps these could be formed by adding q to the 
> pivor. bo -> boq, go -> goq, etc. This would not be done to all 
> pivor. "sa" would be a prime example of a pivor which would need no 
> predicate version. (It would be a no-op.)

Adopting anything like the Lojban rafsi system seems unnecessarily 
complicated; it is rightly one of the most widely disliked features
of Lojban.

--And.