Re: Lojban Names.

[CJ FINE <cbmvax!uunet!bradford.ac.uk!C.J.Fine>]

Thus Julian:
>
> > What on earth is {laibax}?  It is not even a cmene (you can't have {la}
> > inside, except after a consonant, right?)
>
> Isn't that the syllable {la} not the sequence of letters?  {lai} should be OK:
> it can't be interpreted as {la,i} and so there's no danger of hearing the
> word {la}.
>
Actually, "lai" and "doi" are forbitten as well as "la", and for the
same reason - the cmavo may precede the cmene directly. I would have
thought this would apply to "la'i" as well, but I've never seen any such
suggestion.

>  {.ierevan}!
> Another missing [j].  (As far as I know, it's not just a product of Russian
> transliteration.  Which leads me to ask: Why on earth do the French write
> "Eltsine" and then *say* it that way too!)

It's not entirely just Russian transliteration: the Armenian spelling is
"erevan", but initially, "e-" and "o-" are pronounced /je-/ and /wo-/.

Why did the English-speaking world write "Khrushchev" and then pronounce
it that way? (xructcOf, or in Muscovite xruciOf).

> On a totally different topic, could someone please explain what "cleft
> places" are.  By not understanding this term, I seem to be missing out on
> some interesting discussions.

I've only picked this up from examples, but it seems to be cases where a
place of a gismu was an actor/patient and another an event/action, and
the person was usually the actor in the event, eg
        I want him to do
as opposed to
        I want [the event that he do]
which is not cleft.

I'll put all I've got on a floppy this week and post it to you.
                        Colin