Re: Some questions on le'avla

la paulos. cusku di'e

> There are word lists for cmavo, gismu, lujvo, etc., but I haven't
> found a le'avlaste anywhere. Is there something like that?

Not yet.  Anybody who wants to start collecting and populating one is
urged to do so.

> Also the "algorithm" to make le'avla is not very specific about
> which consonant one should choose to begin the borrowing, which
> vowel to end it, which form of the original word to take, and
> even which gismu are most suitable to prefix it.

It isn't meant to be.  The algorithm guarantees that a le'avla created
by it is morphologically valid.  It may or may not be well-chosen.

> For instance, the word "jenmrxametista" was suggested for
> "amethyst". Why an "x" at the beginning? Why the final "a"?

Only the proposer can answer these questions for sure.
However, "x" is not found in Latin or (Classical) Greek, so it has
some suitability as an epenthetic (inserted) consonant.

> The Aesop's fable text contains some animal names, e.g.
> "resprtestudine", "calkrdanlrkankre" (two prefixes!), and
> "cipnrkorvo". Then the ablative singular forms of the latin words
> "testudo", "cancer" and "corvus" were used in the le'avla.
> Is there any special reason?

I think there was a desire to avoid the nominative, since the Romance
languages generally derive their nouns from non-nominative forms.

> (This rule would also explain the
> final "a" in "jenmrxametista", and also suggest "jenmrxonike" or
> "jenmrxonice" for "onyx").
> 
> Still on "calkrdanlrkankre". The gismu "jukni" is defined as
> "x1 is a spider/arachnid/[crustacean/crab/lobster/non-insect
> arthropod] of species/breed x2". Then why not "juknrkankre"?

I think at that time "jukni" meant more narrowly "arachnid" and had not
been extended to other non-insect arthropods.

> By the way, is it possible to combine le'avla into lujvo, e.g.
> "cipnrkorvyterbilma" (crow disease)?

Not directly, because all attempts to do so tended to break up morphologically.
In particular, there is no rule saying that two le'avla can't differ solely
in the final vowel; your method would be ambiguous in the face of such a case.
The proper way is to use "zei", the lujvo glue cmavo:  "cipnrcorvo zei 
terbilma".

-- 
John Cowan					cowan@ccil.org
		e'osai ko sarji la lojban.