Re: Cowan on morphology

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

I disagree with John that Lojban's word-making system makes ad hoc lujvo
making difficult, based on first person experience.  Even though I never
memorized more than 50% of the rafsi (and I'm the only one I know who
made enough of a systematic effort to even give a percentage), I was able to
make words on the fly with no trouble, and for the most part, others were
limited in understanding only when I used rafsi that they didn't know,
and they learned the ones that I used most often rather quickly through ad hoc
analysis in conversation (I am speaking of Sylvia and Athelstan especially
in this regard, since neither had finished even mastering the gismu list
at the time I was in my heyday of lujvo-making in converswation).

Similarly, the people who have been producing Lojban text in quantity -
especially Nick - seem to have had no inhibitiions abobout making and using
lujvo.  Where  he din;t know, he sometimes guessed, and sometimes was even
caught in his guesses, but many of the people who reviewed Nick's writing
were able to understand and translate his results even though there were
some rafsi errors and invalid forms, which shows that even for new people
that HAVEN'T memorized the word lists, they can take apart lujvo on the
fly, and presumably use context and guessing on the source gismu to
interpolate meaning  (I admit that I am worse at this than most - having
formally memorized some of the rafsi, I am less tolerant of errors in rafsi
because I reconstruct the word based on  my knowledghe rather than guessing
and hence get the wrong answer).  Dozens of lujvo made it through the
text reviews with errors, only to be caught mor erecently when Nora's glosser
allowed us to be able to analyze lujvo in text for validity of form and
to check to see if expansions were what the speaker intended.

IN short, what I am saying is that the language WORKS in practice, with
not very well-studied speakers, writers, and listeners/ readers.  Hence
arguments that the morphology is 'too complex' for ad hoc use are demonstrably
false.


ni'o
Nora reminded me this evening, when I first mentioned this thread to her,
that at one point she facetiously suggested a method of achieving perfect
separation of words with no complex rules - just end all words with the
same vowel, one that does not occur in the middles of words.  This came
up when we considered briefly changing the Lojban morphology as part of the spl
split from JCB.  Suppose, for example, that the final vowel of a Lojban
word, whatver it was, was changed to the reduced (always unstressed) schwa,
and some other means was found for hyphenating - probably the syllavbic
r/n/l that is used for le'avla and some lujvo already.  Yeah, the language
would be simpler, and the rules would be too, but I don't think it
would still be Loglan - too much of a different feel.  And we still would
have had to come up with rules for lujvo (even if they would have been simpler)
le'avla (likewise), and cmavo (which would have a real problem if they also had
to end in a schwa).

In effect, of course, this silly idea of Nora's DOES occur in Loglan/Lojban
- in names, where as a result there is almost no rules for internal structure
(but of course  no 2nd level of segregation, or even a way to tell a word
turned into a name from a Lojban root as opposed to Lojbanized from another
language).  Lojban names alll end in a way that makes them distinct - consonant
 followed by pause.

lojbab