Re: Cowan on morphology

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@GREBYN.COM>]

I don't see how our morphology for compounds has anything to do with
learnability of >gismu<.  You can learn gismu without learning either
rafsi or lujvo.

I can't speak for Nick or Colin, but I suspect that most often, people
arew writing without particular regard for their audience, or perhaps
to write at an audience that they know will be using the word lists,
or to write for their peers in the use of the language, who have a
reasonable chance of knowing the rafsi in question.  I agree that it
would be nice to have more texts aimed at beginners, but people don't
write such texts.

My statement about use of rafsi applied to the experiences we have had
here in LIVE conversation, both conversation sessions, and at LogFests.
Very few lujvo, and the ones that are used are composed of rafsi that
are well known (like 'sel-' for se conversion, etc.), and I myself use
some expanded lujvo, when creating them on the fly - OR, if I get a blank
look, I expand it immediately for the listener.  I think the conversations
on the IRC have also minimized lujvo.

A lujvo based on klama in final position should have something to do with
'klama'ing. Now the language won't always be under prescriptive control,
but while it is, I suspect that no 'sapphire' ending in 'klama' words will
get into the dictionary.  Indeed, at the moment within the community, there
remains a very strong literalism trend that objected to the relatively
lesser sloppiness of JCB, who used 'zmadu' (x makes why from z) for causals
in a very malglico manner.  The standard that we teach is that a lujvo
should represent one specific meaning from among the possible meanings that
the associated tanru would have, recognizing that some amount of tanru
modification could take place to bring places fromt he modifier terms into
the lujvo.  The primary debate has actually been whether the determination of
such place structures should be more or less algorithmic from the source
tanru, which practice has NOT been accepted.  But Nick's writings on lujvo
making are promoting a standard only one step less drastic.

Loglan pre-GMR was very much like what you suggest would be better -
allowing jbama and klama to both be represented by -ama in a compound.
It was not as you say - people had to memorize every word they wanted to use,
and to rely on the dictionary for every little thing they did.  The result
was that there was far less Loglan text written than you see these days
being posted to Lojban List.  And people DIDN'T like it, and they complained.
And one noted linguist (Zwicky) was especially critical of this.

lojbab