History: Esperanto-shift

Source of version: 1 (current)

Of course, {''me''} ''zoisy. ... .sy.'' is still possible, or ''zoi .esperanton. ... .esperanton.'' (if "esperanton" doesn't appear in the text), or ''zoi spero. ... .spero.'' But those don't mean the right things: without ''me'', they just refer to those particular Esperanto ''texts''; with ''me'', they say that something is an instance (token) of that particular Esperanto text. ''IMHO, the notion of a mechanism __within__ the grammar of a language for language shifting is a silly one. --((John Cowan))'' (It's obvious you never lived in a place where Spanglish occurs...) * Spanglish tends to consist of English words forced into the spanish phonology and used in spanish. It is really not a whole lot different than, for instance, using lojban with ((type 4 fu'ivla)) where there is a simple tanru availible. I have not heard much spanglish, but my sense is that it is similar also to what I know of the language in Kazakhstan - last year my family hosted an exchange student from there who said that since everyone spoke fluent Russian and Kazakh, they spoke Kazakh with a LOT of russian words mixed in. Spanglish is NOT a natural language with a shift built into the grammar, it is a pidgin (in the non-demeaning sense of the word), one which it would not surprise me to see one day replacing both English and Spanish in the United States. - mi'e. ((kreig.daniyl.)) ** Codeswitching (which is what Esperanto-shift is advocating, if I am making sense of this proposal) is nothing like Kazakh with Russian words. We're talking the equivalent of Kazakh with entire Russian phrases, and no necessary assimilation at all. There are two autonomous linguistic systems being alternated between in code-switching, not a mixture of the two. The real Lojban analogue to code-switching is not the occasional fu'ivla, but entire embedded phrases of English --- things like ''mi djuno ledu'u __I was going to come over tonight__ gi'e ku'i na ka'e go'i''; and this is advocating using a cmavo to signal this. Right? Because if this was just the occasional fu'ivla, we already have mechanisms for that. -- nitcion. No fair. Natural language codeswitching certainly doesn't use grammar to signal the switch. * Exactly. If grammatically controlled at all (and I think it is) it's controlled by a metagrammar outside both natlang grammars, with rules like "Don't switch within tightly bound constructs" and "Switch only where the two language grammars are alignable (thus no switch between English preposed adjective and Spanish noun, nor between English noun and postposed Spanish adjective)." (And being himself bilingual, I'm sure John knows full well what codeswitching is.) * Who, me bilingual? Not at all. I decided to learn Lojban many years ago to escape monolingualism -- hasn't exactly worked yet. --((John Cowan)) If you're speaking grammatically correct, computer-parsed Lojban, you have no need to switch out of Lojban with anything but the generic foreign-language switches anyway. If you're going to ''galfi le bangu poi do pilno ku'o ca'o lenu tavla'', why on earth legitimate it with a novel, explicit grammatical mechanism? Why on earth isn't ''zoi'' at the start of a new utterance enough? What next, a cmavo to signal up-coming coughs? -- nitcion. * Given the smoke level here in Manhattan these days, we may need one. :-) ** Smoke level back to normal. *** Is that any better? * If we don't make such a cmavo, they could be mistaken for a name - adding a sumti (la xux.) in the middle and messing up the whole bridi **I'm not sure a new cmavo would actually be required here. The way to cough grammatically would be: ''mi klama to'i zoi ke ''<actual cough here>'' ke toi le zarci'' Should it be necessary to disambiguate (in a context where for example the cough might be taken for a sneeze) you can simply add a ''noi mi kafke ke'a'' in the appropriate place. ** .ue vi le jbonai po'o fasnu... * Um, we already have such a cmavo: '''.y.''' It is known not to be restricted to exactly that sound. ---- (My point about grammatically signalling codeswitching in Lojban is, we are explicit about everything else metalinguistic, why not this?)