Re: De-Proposition

la mark,l. cusku di'e

> [M]y gut feeling insisted that the rafsi needed fixing.  As to what,
> exactly, is wrong with them, maybe my analysis has been shallow,
> misguided or incomplete.  But the twinge in the gut remains.  That
> twinge, more than anything, was the "point" of my "Rafsi Repair Proposal."

Historically, people have gotten far more upset over morphology issues,
including especially morphology changes, than over syntactic ones.
That's one reason the morphology hasn't changed since about 1982, except
for a few missing hyphens that JCB still hasn't admitted are needed.

JCB used this fact (greater resistance to morphology changes) to propose
one of his charmingly bogus theories: that the morphology engine in the brain
is of Neanderthal age, whereas the syntax engine is Homo sapiens-specific.
(I think that people learn words in a 2nd language before they learn anything
but basic syntax, and that word relearning is painful to anybody.)

> Maybe a few [conlangs] will grow out of some other
> approach, like trying to integrate Putonghua Chinese with English.

Sounds too easy.  How about integrating Chinese with Finnish?
-- 
John Cowan					cowan@ccil.org
		e'osai ko sarji la lojban.