[YG Conlang Archives] > [ceqli group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
on 4/25/02 1:47 PM, Rob Speer at rob@hidden.email wrote: > On Thu, Apr 25, 2002 at 09:24:32AM -0600, Rex May - Baloo wrote: >>> fu would most likely have a predicate equivalent. "fuq" to follow the >>> pattern, though in Lojban things like that went the other way - words >>> like "balvi" (future) were created first, and from there came the cmavo >>> "ba" (future tense). >>> >>> As for "right away", that's what "zi" is for in Lojban. I assume those >>> words would get imported into Ceqli. >> >> Yes, but it's irritating to have a whole new word, when 'pifu's meaning is >> so obvious. > > Obvious, but it sounds idiomatic and heavily inspired by English to me. > "A little bit later". Just musing here, but could we not say that a pred -can- modify a non-pred, or at least form a compound with it? > >> What do you think of And's comments? > > I suppose I could deal with it if the language didn't have a clear > distinction between predicates and pinvor, but And's reason for it makes > no sense. He says that it is unclear what is a predicate and what is > not. > > But there's nothing unclear about it. In the Lojban grammar, which I get > the impression it's Ceqli's goal to match, predicates are a very > specific grammatical class. You can't include a word in the language > until you know what its grammatical function is. > > But I do agree with something else he mentioned - that pinvor should > fall into series that help to identify _their_ function. This is > something I'd been thinking about already - starting the most common > question words with "kw": > > Lojban ma -> kwa (what object?) > Lojban mo -> kwo (what predicate?) > Lojban xu -> kwe (yes/no question) > Lojban xo -> kwi (how many?) I like this a lot. Does the yes/no thing really fit in there? I'd rather use the kwe for your 'ji' below. And if we need more to fit here, go with kway, kwey, kwaw. > > Lojban also has a bunch of miscellaneous, infrequently-used question > words that ask for an answer that is from some grammatical class. > Perhaps this could be done with a separate word (say kju), followed by > an example of a word from that class. > > For example, probably the most useful one of these is the conjunction > question, ji. The conjunctions that connect two sumti (objects) are: > > .a or > .e and > .o iff > .u whether-or-not > > Using "ji" as a conjunction asks for an answer like .e, .enai, .a, etc. > The canonical use for this is asking "Would you like coffee or tea?", > where .enai is "coffee, not tea", and na.e is "tea, not coffee", while > .e requests both and .a says it doesn't matter. And so on. > > There are other series like ja, je, jo, ju; gi'a, gi'e, gi'o, gi'u; > etc. for other kinds of conjunctions, such as between > predicates. This is a really significant concept > for a logical language, so Ceqli should make sure to pick some good > series for these. But each of these has its own question word, which is > often inconsistent in form. > > So perhaps instead of having a separate question word for each series, > Ceqli could use "kju .a", "kju xa" (making the assumption that > ja/je/jo/ju become xa/xe/xo/xu), etc. There's even a really infrequently > used question that asks what place of a predicate something goes in, > which would become "kju fa". This sounds good, too. -- >PLEASE NOTE MY NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS: rmay@hidden.email > Rex F. May (Baloo) > Daily cartoon at: http://www.cnsnews.com/cartoon/baloo.asp > Buy my book at: http://www.kiva.net/~jonabook/gdummy.htm > Language site at: http://www.geocities.com/ceqli/Uploadexp.htm >Discuss my auxiliary language at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/txeqli/