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On Tue, Apr 30, 2002 at 04:57:51AM -0600, Rex May - Baloo wrote: > Hm. Is everybody happy with this setup? My knee-jerk reaction is that I'd > rather just learn one word and maybe mess around with prefixes or some > other way to vary the place structure. Maybe > > Go bol baj bej. I say x to y. > Go tembol ta kan zi I about-speak dogs to you. I talk to you about dogs. > Go cumbol baj bej I sound-say x to y. I make the sound x to y. > Go plojbol ta ceqli. I use-say Ceqli. I speak Ceqli. > this would be a rather Esperantoish approach. The first three sound reasonable. The fourth doesn't; somehow in the compound the thing said turns into the language. But having separate predicates for them can come in handy in compounds. I suggest: kal x1 talks to x2 about x3 bar x1 utters/vocally makes sound x2 bol x1 says x2 (fact/text) to x3 ban x1 is the language used by x2 > I'm inclined to go with 'daj', as it suggests argument. Then 'daw' could be > the up-coming argument. The word for "the upcoming argument" is very infrequently used in Lojban. Much more common are "ra" (a recent argument, but not the previous) and "ru" (a not-so-recent argument). In fact, "ri" and "ra" translate "it" almost all of the time. > >>> * A paragraph separator. > >> > >> Like Loglan 'nao'? Sure thing. > > > > Though hopefully not a false cognate like that. (They even glossed it as > > "Now"!) > > How about 'cin' meaning 'new' from Mandarin. "Ho cin" begins a paragraph. But a paragraph isn't a modal. I'll explain. A 'modal tag', as I think the full term is, is a way of taking some predicate and tacking on a place from another predicate. So modals always attach to preja, act like an extra place, and are followed by a gjume. (Well, in Lojban they can modify the selbri/bepreja itself, and I have no idea what the result is supposed to mean. There's another aspect of grammar we can leave out.) Anyway, my hope was that we'd get something mnemonically inspired by another Ceqli word, not something formed directly from another Ceqli word. 'cin' could be the predicate for 'new' (I like it better than 'pja' which the current dictionary has). The paragraph separator could then be something like 'cio'. > >>> * An end-of-text marker. (Again largely theoretical, but Lojban's "Alice > >>> in Wonderland" translation uses it for its obvious use, "The End".) > >> > >> How about 'pio,' from english PerIOd. > > > > Okay. But I suppose that at this point we should start coming up with > > the predicate words, as many of Lojban's cmavo were inspired by those > > instead of by other languages. "fa'o", its end of text word, came from > > "fanmo" for "final". > > > > (My word-making algorithm seems to rather like 'nj'. It makes 'fanje' as a > > suggestion for 'final'.) > Sure. Now, shouldn't the actual expression be a pinvor+fanje? Can 'ho' do > it? ho fanje Come to think of it, "final" is a perfectly good word and would probably have better mnemonic value for people who actually end up using the language. The mnemonic-based word for "end of text" can then be "fia". > I'm very vague about this. To me they're pretty much the same thing in most > instances. But before an initial vowel, I seem to want to make the glottal > stop pretty clearly. I'm reconciled with the need for a pause after a name, > to be shown with a comma-pause. I guess I don't know enough about phonetics to really know the difference between a glottal stop and a pause. Can there be a glottal stop between consonants? What would be used to briefly stop in saying "kan .my"? -- Rob Speer