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Nick:
> > From:� Robert LeChevalier <lojbab@l...>
> > At 03:46 AM 6/3/03 +0100, And Rosta wrote:
>
> > >I wonder whether "izpolzovat" is as frequent as "use"
> > It would seem so,
>
> Now I'm just going to veer off on a tangent, but: Greek xrisimopio,
> with at least 5 syllables (4 if you get io > jo, but that's
> stigmatised) is even longer, and is the unmarked contemporary word for
> 'use'. That said, it's clear that it's a reimportation from learned
> Greek (hence no io > jo); the real vernacular way of saying it was "to
> kano", "do (with) it", or just the instrumental preposition
>
> Tendencies of language like Zipf are very easy to disrupt through other
> factors --- as Bob is in fact alluding to. Language change is like that
Perhaps you can get him to see the difference between countervailing
tendencies and the nonexistence of a tendency.
> Zipf is what Lojbanists make of it, though, and they choose to make a
> lot of it. And Lojbanists often purposely avoid what their natlang does
> (it's the same with Klingon -- and quite unlike most of Esperanto), so
> the adherence to Zipf is as dogmatic as anything else. And if that
> means people obsess about monosyllables, well, that's the culture
> they've been passed down from Loglan, I don't see the point in trying
> to dismiss it. (Not that I've kept track of who's arguing what here...)
My sense is the value placed on succinctness arises partly spontaneously
from intuitive aesthetics, and partly from comparison with natlang
succinctness.
> English has killed its inflections; comparing it to inflection-mongers
> like Russian and Greek is unfair. The number of monosyllabic Greek
> nouns and verbs is minimal; and when you know you're going to lose 2
> syllables to inflection, 5-syllable words just ain't that scary any
> more. So this is apples and oranges
>
> And a reminder, folks, that teleological arguments about language
> change are intuitive and appealing --- and like most simple, easy to
> understand answers, are wrong
Why are they wrong? They seem to me a good way of explaining tendencies,
even if they are not good explanations of the mechanisms that bring
about realizations of those tendencies. (Are you no longer the
functionalist you once were?)
> > > > >Furthermore,
> > > > >we regularly come up against stuff that is easy to say in
> > English but
> > > > >that nobody can find a way to say in Lojban
> > > >
> > > > I think that this is partly lack of fluency. I think they can be
> > said in
> > > > Lojban, but we haven't thought things through always
> > >
> > >I hope Nick will give this one of his splendidly scornful tirades
>
> Didn't quite know why, because the thinking through is what we're
> doing, and the fluency has got to come from somewhere..
cf. what you say to Bob below.
> > >If I may echo Jordan's rhetoric, this notion of "lack of fluency" is
> > >a load of shite. Sure we lack fluency. But there is nothing there to
> > >be fluent in. If they can be said in Lojban, the bits of Lojban they
> > >can be said in are the bits of Lojban that haven't been created yet
> >
> > Correct. And once we agree upon a pattern for expressing that sort of
> > thing, fluent language habits would spread its usage to all manner of
> > like
> > situations. I contend that the reason we don't agree is because there
> > is
> > too little fluency, too little experience trying to communicate. If
> > we had
> > gained that experience, we would be able to agree, and likely there
> > would
> > be somewhat less contention about how to say it either formally or
> > sloppily
>
> .... here, on the other hand, Bob would get a splendidly scornful
> tirade, if I hadn't already issued one elsewhere tonight. :-)
>
> You persist in your naturalism, Bob, and I'll persist in my formalism.
> Without the guidance of formality, what people would come up with in
> their experience would be what we routinely condemn as malglico. And
> Lojban would be Novial Mark 2. It's not fluency that's the issue, it's
> research. Fluency didn't solve the gadri issue, it just assumed {mi
> nitcu lo mikce} was hunky-dory for "I need a doctor"
--And.