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Mike S., On 24/08/2012 03:13:
The following is just an explanation of my reasoning FWIW. Xorxe has already made a bunch of these decisions so consider these remarks largely moot.
On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 6:18 PM, And Rosta <and.rosta@hidden.email <mailto:and.rosta@hidden.email>> wrote:
Mike S., On 23/08/2012 04:29:
> On Wed, Aug 22, 2012 at 7:42 PM, Jorge Llamb�as <jjllambias@hidden.email <mailto:jjllambias%40gmail.com> <mailto:jjllambias@hidden.email <mailto:jjllambias%40gmail.com>>> wrote:
> I'm
> thinking names will be predicates like almost all other words of the
> language.
>
> All names N could be predicates defined as "x is [known by/called]
> [name/transliteration] N [to/by] y" e.g. "He's 'Johnny' to his
> friends".
I would have names be syntactically/semantically ordinary predicates. What distinguishes them from other predicates is their limitless homonymy, so it would be good to have a way of marking them, e.g. by some initial CV.
Having a separate morphological class for names/borrowings is nice
because name-semantics are totally predictable.
There would be relatively little homonymy and no need for a kludge if
there were a way to transliterate names from the vast array of
natural languages with relatively little change. I gather that
transliteration is not a primary aim of the language, but
nevertheless I believe it would be useful and convenient for Xorban
speakers to have a relatively faithful and easy method of
transliteration. Using a designated phoneme like the glottal stop
(properly spelled) {'} would allow that. That way, recognizable words
like {'spageti'-}, {'betxoven'-}, {'joxanezberx'-}, {'kimono'-},
{'tiranosawrus'-} are possible that cause little need for fussing or
guessing. To xorbanize, simply drop/alter the vowels and drop
glottals -> spgt-, btxvn-, jxnzbrx-, kmn-, trnsrs- and
modify/compound if there is a collision with an existing predicate.
Or, maybe the first {'} could be a CV as you suggested, and the
second {'} always preceded by a vowel. That would be a little longer,
but easier to pronounce.
If <'> is an allograph of <q> (if <q> is /?/), that would indeed be a nice way of marking quotatives (i.e. mentioned linguistic material), and one function of quotatives could be, as you suggested, in a construction meaning "X is name of Y". Or, you could have two name-initial particles, e.g. <'i> for names where the stem ends before the next vowel, and <'u> for names where the stem ends at the next <'>.
> The only question is about using the commonly used variables of shape
> "V" - if we are also doing things like using free variables to create
> the passive voice so to speak, we have to be careful about that. The
> sentence "na la xrja nlceka" intended as "pigs aren't liked", under a
> certain context might mean "the woman with the red hat doesn't like
> pigs". So maybe we should set aside or some "V'V" or "Vy"or "aw" for
> the purpose of an explicitly unbound variable indicating something
> like "zo'e".
{zo'e} is a terrible idea, because it's so unhelpfully vague. But a V'V for "le co'e" -- "him/her/it/them" might be a good idea. Maybe the rule would be that V'a is interpreted as a definite reference unless explicitly bound.
That's the whole point though. You aren't too concerned that it's
vague; you only want to fill the next slot. I might have opened up a
can of worms by mentioning to {zo'e}. I am not sure what the
difference is in Lojban, but I imagine "aw" (now "o'e" by xortermi'e)
might mean be more equivalent to "lo ku" in Lojban if that were
grammatically possible. In Xorban "o'e" would be automatically bound
by "lo'e smo'e"; I believe "sm-" to be the generic predicate such
that "ra Pa sma" is true for all predicates P in Xorban.
Ah, like Lojban {lo du} rather than {zo'e}. Yes, fine. But I would assign this interpretation to any variable not explicitly bound, which distinct unbound variables having distinct reference, and (tho probably this creates too many problems) repeated unbound variables having the same reference.
As far as definite references, I think all "reused" (i.e. previously bound but now free) variables are definite references. Free variables are automatically bound as "l- R-" where R was the restriction under the most recent binding.
Can you reexplain what you mean here?
Let compounds be merely a concatenation of the stems. It doesn't matter if, say, CCCC is ambiguous between CC+CC and CCCC, or CCCCC between CC+CCC and CCC+CC: compounding would be a purely mnemonic way of forming novel predicates, derivationally translucent.
I know you disagree, but I don't think it harms anything to have a
compound hyphen that derives non-fully-compositional compounds. There
could also be other hyphens to produce the fully compositional
meanings based on the suffix. Given Xorban's syntax with overt
variables and binary operators, we could potentially avoid a lot of
verbosity via such shortcuts. Something to put on the back burner for
now, of course.
I'm all for something that creates brevity. But a compound hyphen reduces brevity.
Discussion of phonology is really a separate discussion, but since you brought it up, I'd go for:
vowels [a e i o u y @], <a e i o u y> with /@/ unwritten
The one thing that Zamenhof is universally acknowledged to have
gotten right is the vowel system :) I am surprised that a native
Spanish speaker has sanctioned this six-vowel inventory.
I'm not a native Spanish speaker, I'm a native English speaker. I'm sure there's nothing that Zamenhof is universally acknowledged to have got right.
consonants, probably one for each remaining letter of the 26-letter alphabet, /b c d f g h j k l m n p q r s t v w x z/. Assuming Lojban phonetic values, that leaves values needed for <h q w>. Obvious phonetic values are gap-filling velar nasal and voiced velar fricative, and glottal stop, which Lojban has (but with very limited phonotactic distribution). for slightly better grapheme assignment, use <h> for [x], <x> for [S], <q> for [?], and <w> for [G] and <c> for [N] or vice versa.
That's efficient, but ugly. Is it forbidden for loglangs to use
Unicode? If I were competing for Prettiest Romanization Award and not
worried about convenience, I'd make Lojban look like the eastern
European language that it sounds like:
The attraction of choosing the graphemes first is that it's (arguably) easier to reach a consensus on having 26 graphemes (because that's what most versions of roman provide) than to reach a consensus on phonemes. Given the paramount goal of brevity without information loss, there'd be pressure to have the phoneme inventory as large as possible, where the limits of possibility are when the phonetic distinctions are too difficult for most people to maintain. I think it'd be hard to reach consensus on where that limit lies. FWIW, Livagian has 21 unaccented consonants, 4 accented consonants, 7 unaccented vowels and 8 accented vowels -- 21 consonants and 7 vowels if you take only the unaccented. So that gives a sense of where I strike the balance. --And.