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la and cusku di'e
The problem is not so much that the entire number expression takes so long to say that one forgets how it began, but that one's short term memory gets overloaded before one can begin processing the number.
I would think that we process by chunks. So if we hear
{ci pa ki'o ze no no}, we process 31 as one unit, then ki'o,
then 700, and we only have to put together the three things.
We don't have to wait till the end to process the parts.
> But a ji'i in the middle of the word is a
> big nuisance. If you're used to understanding {cirevo} as 324,
> and {cire} as 32, then hearing {cire ji'i vo} you will first
> think it's 32 and then you have to adjust to a special 324.
I don't really understand this. If you hear {ci re vo}, what
stops you parsing {ci re} as 32?
Knowing that numbers come in groups of at most three. Of course if the 4 takes too long in coming we will parse it as 32. Waiting for three digits is not so bad, because they are short.
What stops you is surely the knowledge that you have to wait for the expression to be complete.
Right. But only at most a three syllable expression. {ji'i}
makes it a five syllable expression, and also a rather more
complex one.
I acknowledge that you have more usage experience than me, but my own sense is that the one is not more gardenpathy than the other.
I have almost no experience with usage of numbers, so your sense is as good as mine. But surely the ji'i expressions are more complex, whether we are able to handle them or not. mu'o mi'e xorxes _________________________________________________________________MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx