WikiDiscuss

On 5/16/05, John E Clifford <clifford-j@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> I was ovbjecting to BAI that are not
> iin the language to begin with (except in these
> barely justifiable examples).

It is not clear what "being in the language" means to you.
All BAIs under discussion have been listed in the ma'oste
for years. None has been added since I joined Lojban
in '94.

> Well, I agree that keywords are generally not
> very useful — even misleading in many cases --
> but my protest is exqactly to including them in
> the dictionary when they have never occrred in
> the language. Will all the 100000 or so gismu be
> included?

Not sure what you mean by that. There are
1400 or so gismu in the language.

> What about all the cmavo in /x/?

I would include {xa'o}, but I doubt I'll get my way.

> Or
> the as yet unused CV'V'VV? And so on. It isn't
> even that there are plausible cases that these
> BAI forms ought to be used, in most instances.

But unfortunately the BAIs are not in experimental
space. They are a standard part of the official cmavo,
all of which need defining.

> I have no objection to clarifying — even
> prescribing to some extent — the existing usage.
> It does seem to me that some expressions have
> been used inconsistently (or at least unclearly)
> and inappropriately for their intended roles (as
> subordinate clauses, for example, rather than
> added places in the case of BAIs). But that is
> very different from creating NEW usages out of
> whole cloth (and based on nothing real at all).

We obviously have a different perception of the issue.

> Well, we have discussed half a dozen cases over
> the last little while: two that stick in mind
> without searching are {du'u}, whose meaning is
> not related by the "rules" to {djuno} (more to
> {jinvi} or {krici} — which pair of words needs
> some work, come to think of it)

Well, that's the kind of clarification I'm after. Should
{du'o} be {fi'o djuno}, or something much wider?

>and {ri'anai},
> whose meaning violates both {rinka} and {nai}, as
> typically understood in this game of BAI
> creation, and is not easily constructed in this
> way from other brivla.

{to'e ri'a nai} is the more regular construction for
"not prevented by/in spite of".

mu'o mi'e xorxes