diklujvo - not nasty chomping monsters!

[cbmvax!uunet!ee.mu.OZ.AU!nsn]

Nick catches up with mail after exams.

>From: jimc@math.ucla.edu
>Message-Id: <9106112350.AA26579@euphemia.math.ucla.edu>
>To: lojban-list@snark.thyrsus.com
>Subject: Response to Six Messages
>Date: Tue, 11 Jun 91 16:50:46 +0100

>	le mlatu cu gasnu    le nu le ratcu cu morsi
>	the cat  (transitive)      the rat     dead
>	The cat kills the rat (makes it dead)
>
>Ask your standard natural language speaker whether "kill" is a unitary
>concept that "ought" to be represented by a gismu-like brivla, and he
>certainly will say "yes, and the above pile of phrases is a pile of
>something else".  In other words, a lujvo "mroygau" is demanded.  Jimc
>says that handcrafted lujvo are a dead end and proposes diklujvo -- a
>set of rules whereby virtually ALL lujvo and tanru, about 99% by count of
>usage in -gua!spi, can be interpreted to transform to a collection of
>phrases headed by gismu like the one above.  diklujvo are much more
>attractive than requiring people to speak explicitly all the abstract
>sumti.  

I dislike gasnu, because its semantics is still very much in flux; rinka
is much less ambiguous. To say

tu'a le mlatu cu rinka lenu le ratcu cu morsi

is not hard work. Unfortunately for lojbab, jimc is right - diklujvo is
the way to go. But Jimc's presentation oversteps itself: there can be no
such thing as a diktanru, and the convenience with which a diklujvo clefts
the second place does not affect the first. btw, if you, jimc, used rinka
(with its overt similarity to the Esperanto -ig) rather than your eccentric
version of binxo, you'd get more fans. The above phrase transforms very
simply to

tu'a le mlatu mrori'a le ratcu.

I have made a proposal for a lexeme to act as a general purpose clefter, 
throwing the uncleft place into fai. This will not be considered for a while,
as someone's writing a textbook (hrumf) but applied hereat it would give

le mlatu xai mrori'a le ratcu. 

The places of the diklujvo are something hardly mentioned wrt lojban by jimc,
which makes lojbab's comments on 'absurdly complicated processing' invalid:
what jimc has in fact given us is the flimsiest of semantic sketches: in
effect, the lujvo brodabrode is interpreted as

broda be lenu brode
broda je/joi/poi brode
brode be le brode.

Had jimc gotten into places, that would be hot water. For example, the word
'feed' goes into diklujvo nicely, with x2 and x3 the x1 and x2 of the modificand
predicate:

tu'a mi rinka lenu do xitka loi guzme
My action causes that you eat melons
tu'a mi ctiri'a do loi guzme
I feed you melons

But transfer that to 'to want something', and the mapping between NL and lojban
places stuffs up

mi djica lenu mi ponse ti
I want to own that
mi posydji mi ti
I want me that

which is a cute Shakespearish ethical dative ("He plucked me ope his doublet"),
but doesn't give us what we want ("I want that"). What to do? Either allow
two rules for diklujvo places (one of which omits the x1 of the modificand
bridi as impicitly equal to the lujvo x1, or have a neater modifcand

mi selposydji ti mi
I want that for me
(I want: that this be owned [by me])
(mi djica lenu ti se ponse mi)

If jimc had said any of that, lojbab's crit would be justified. He hasn't, so
all he's guitly of is bad terminology and worse rafsi hyphenating. Lay off
him already, O Bob LeChevalier! diklujvo right now are just a guideline, and
a welcome one.