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The Shape Of Words To Come: Lojban Morphology - The Lojban Reference Grammar
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The Shape Of Words To Come: Lojban Morphology
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The Lojban Reference Grammar
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The lujvo-making algorithm
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<h3><a id="s10" name="s10">10. Considerations for making lujvo</h3>
<p>Given a tanru which expresses an idea to be used frequently,
it can be turned into a lujvo by following the lujvo-making
algorithm which is given in <a href="s11.html">Section 11</a>.</p>
<p>In building a lujvo, the first step is to replace each gismu
with a rafsi that uniquely represents that gismu. These rafsi
are then attached together by fixed rules that allow the
resulting compound to be recognized as a single word and to be
analyzed in only one way.</p>
<p>There are three other complications; only one is
serious.</p>
<p>The first is that there is usually more than one rafsi that
can be used for each gismu. The one to be used is simply
whichever one sounds or looks best to the speaker or writer.
There are usually many valid combinations of possible rafsi.
They all are equally valid, and all of them mean exactly the
same thing. (The scoring algorithm given in <a
href="s12.html">Section 12</a> is used to choose the standard form
of the lujvo --- the version which would be entered into a
dictionary.)</p>
<p>The second complication is the serious one. Remember that a
tanru is ambiguous --- it has several possible meanings. A
lujvo, or at least one that would be put into the dictionary,
has just a single meaning. Like a gismu, a lujvo is a predicate
which encompasses one area of the semantic universe, with one
set of places. Hopefully the meaning chosen is the most useful
of the possible semantic spaces. A possible source of
linguistic drift in Lojban is that as Lojbanic society evolves,
the concept that seems the most useful one may change.</p>
<p>You must also be aware of the possibility of some prior
meaning of a new lujvo, especially if you are writing for
posterity. If a lujvo is invented which involves the same tanru
as one that is in the dictionary, and is assigned a different
meaning (or even just a different place structure), linguistic
drift results. This isn't necessarily bad. Every natural
language does it. But in communication, when you use a meaning
different from the dictionary definition, someone else may use
the dictionary and therefore misunderstand you. You can use the
cmavo ``za'e'' (explained in <a href="../c19/s1.html">Chapter
19</a>) before a newly coined lujvo to indicate that it may
have a non-dictionary meaning.</p>
<p>The essential nature of human communication is that if the
listener understands, then all is well. Let this be the
ultimate guideline for choosing meanings and place structures
for invented lujvo.</p>
<p>The third complication is also simple, but tends to scare
new Lojbanists with its implications. It is based on Zipf's
Law, which says that the length of words is inversely
proportional to their usage. The shortest words are those which
are used more; the longest ones are used less. Conversely,
commonly used concepts will be tend to be abbreviated. In
English, we have abbreviations and acronyms and jargon, all of
which represent complex ideas that are used often by small
groups of people, so they shortened them to convey more
information more rapidly.</p>
<p>Therefore, given a complicated tanru with grouping markers,
abstraction markers, and other cmavo in it to make it
syntactically unambiguous, the psychological basis of Zipf's
Law may compel the lujvo-maker to drop some of the cmavo to
make a shorter (technically incorrect) tanru, and then use that
tanru to make the lujvo.</p>
<p>This doesn't lead to ambiguity, as it might seem to. A given
lujvo still has exactly one meaning and place structure. It is
just that more than one tanru is competing for the same lujvo.
But more than one meaning for the tanru was already competing
for the ``right'' to define the meaning of the lujvo. Someone
has to use judgment in deciding which one meaning is to be
chosen over the others.</p>
<p>If the lujvo made by a shorter form of tanru is in use, or
is likely to be useful for another meaning, the decider then
retains one or more of the cmavo, preferably ones that set this
meaning apart from the shorter form meaning that is used or
anticipated. As a rule, therefore, the shorter lujvo will be
used for a more general concept, possibly even instead of a
more frequent word. If both words are needed, the simpler one
should be shorter. It is easier to add a cmavo to clarify the
meaning of the more complex term than it is to find a good
alternate tanru for the simpler term.</p>
<p>And of course, we have to consider the listener. On hearing
an unknown word, the listener will decompose it and get a tanru
that makes no sense or the wrong sense for the context. If the
listener realizes that the grouping operators may have been
dropped out, he or she may try alternate groupings, or try
inserting an abstraction operator if that seems plausible. (The
grouping of tanru is explained in <a href="../c5/s1.html">Chapter
5</a>; abstraction is explained in <a
href="../c11/s1.html">Chapter 11</a>.) Plausibility is the key to
learning new ideas and to evaluating unfamiliar lujvo.</p>
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The Shape Of Words To Come: Lojban Morphology
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The Lojban Reference Grammar
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The lujvo-making algorithm
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