Re: Subject: Re: TEXT: pemci

[ucleaar <ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk>]

Lojbab:
> >[Indeed, in one respect I think the desire to avoid being malglico
> >has gone full cirle and ended up very malglico indeed: I am thinking
> >of the lack of any convenient way to make the logically and
> >typologically important distinction between singular and plural
> >(suhore is a bit of a mouthful) - my reading of this is that it
> >results from a desire to be unEnglish, even though number distinctions
> >are widespread among languages. Apologies if my guess at the history
> >of this is wrong.]
>
> Which it is, I think.  This dates from the earliest incarnations of Loglan.
> A language which is culturally neutral AND metaphysically parsimonious makes
> as few assumptions about what distinctions are important as possible.  The
> importance of singular/plural is not important in ALL situations in all
> languages, likewise tense, likewise individual/mass/abstraction.
[...]
> The fact that su'ore is long bespeaks the fact that it is explicitly marked.

I applaud making all distinctions optional, unless they are logically
inescapable (e.g. le v. lo. v. lohe...). I applaud tense being optional.
But we do have pu/ba/ca - 3 very short cmavo explicitly designed into
the language. So yes, tense must be shown by additional markers, but
not by something as circumlocutory as "suhore".

Nothing is unsayable: all number distinctions made by other langs can
be made in Lojban. But the number of syllables it requires exerts a
bias on usage.

What I think is malglico (but not carmi malglico) is not the decision
not to make number distinctions obligatory, but rather the failure to
design in a short & simple way to indicate plurality.

----
And