Sau La Keugru

Loglan 1 Updater: Decisions of the Loglan Academy

The Loglan Institute publishes in its journal, La Logli, a cumulative summary of official changes to the Loglan language since the publication of Loglan 1 (Fourth Edition). These changes are decisions taken by La Keugru -- the Loglan Academy (ke(rj)u + gru(pa) = 'Care-taking group') -- and are published as a Sau La Keugru (SLK) column in the subsequent issue of the Institute's periodical Lognet. The purpose in reprinting these columns in La Logli, and now here on the Internet, is to provide a single reference to all official changes in the language since the publication of its defining document, Loglan 1. This file is an HTML version of the Updater published in La Logli 96/1; it covers the Keugru reports that appeared in Lognets 90/1, 90/2, 90/3, 91/1, 91/3, 92/3, 93/1, 93/4, 94/2, 94/3, and 96/3.

For convenience in consulting these reports, two alphabetical indexes have been added. The first lists the Loglan words discussed in the reports; since these are all little words, this index amounts to an updating of Appendix A of Loglan 1. The second index lists keywords (or nicknames) for the subjects discussed in the reports. The first appearance of each indexed term in the indicated report is emphasized in italics, to make it easier to find. The links appearing in the on-line indexes lead to the paragraph in which the indexed term appears.

[Bill Gober has prepared a complete new "edition" of Appendix A -- all the little words -- including the changes described here. You can find this list, sorted alphabetically, at: Appendix A (alphabetical) and, sorted by lexical class, at: Appendix A (lexemes).]

The individuals who have contributed to Keugru deliberations are:
James Cooke Brown (JCB)
Robert A. McIvor (RAM)
Stephen L. Rice
Bill Gober
M. Randall Holmes
Kirk Sattley

Members of the Keugru, 2013:
Randall Holmes
John Cowan
Cyril Slobin
la Selpahis
Emerson Mitchell

Index of Loglan words

alkoholi – changed from alkooli, Keugru Proposal 13/2, 2013.

ba, be, bo, bu -- non-designating variables not necessarily distinct -- 96/3
ci -- 13/8 must be used to mark predunit components of serial names
ciu -- 'equality' modal, combines: eciu, ceciu, keciu, nociu -- 93/4
-cli -- (from clika) suffix forming comparative predicates -- 93/4
-cu -- forms indefinite set-descriptors -- 96/3
cue -- replaced by geu (to close ge grouping) -- 93/4
die -- affectionate attitudinal (from dipri) -- 90/1
dui, dua -- reference of predicate variables includes arguments -- 94/3
fie -- friendly attitudinal (from fremi) -- 90/1
fuo -- reflexive conversion for third argument position -- 94/3
ga -- distinguished from gau -- 90/1
gau -- strong potentiality marker -- 90/1
geu -- replaces cue (to close ge...geu predicate-group) -- 93/4
go -- bracketing of go expressions -- 92/3
goi -- scope restricted to atomic sentence -- 94/3
hoi -- vocative, letter opening -- 90/2; 90/3; Keugru Proposal 13/9
hue -- inverse vocative, letter closing -- 90/2; 90/3; 92/3
ikou -- now in ICA lexeme (was in I lexeme) -- 94/3
ize, izeci, izege -- claim concurrency of connected sentences -- 94/3
jui -- case tag for 'lesser' argument (from junti; replaces mao) -- 93/4
juo -- reflexive conversion for fourth argument position -- 94/3
kae -- courteous attitudinal (from ckano) -- 90/1
kle- -- (from klesi) prefix for categorial predicate -- 93/4
laa -- 'the unique object which ...' -- 92/3
lae -- indirect designation (pairs now with lue) -- 90/1
lao -- foreign name flag -- 92/3
lau -- introduces list of elements of a set -- 92/3; 94/3
lee -- 'an arbitrarily chosen object which ...' -- 92/3
lii -- now character quotation operator (was 'clearly') -- 92/3
lio -- can take non-numerical operands -- 91/1
liu -- single-word quotation -- 92/3
lou -- introduces an ordered list -- 94/3
lua -- closes list of set elements -- 92/3; 94/3
lue -- inverse of indirect designation (was sae in L1) -- 90/1
luo -- closes an ordered list -- 94/3
mao -- (case tag) replaced by jui -- 93/4
me + variable -- (Lemi meda = 'mine') -- 90/3
me -- usage restricted to building extensional predicates -- 94/3
mea -- used for metaphorical senses of original me -- 94/3
mou -- modal operator, now defined 'more than ...' -- 93/4
mou -- combines: emou, cemou, nomou, numou, nunomou -- 93/4
-mou -- (from mordu) suffix forming generalized comparatives -- 93/4
nepo, nepu, etc. -- 92/3
nio -- subtraction sign (replaces niu) -- 92/3
niu -- spoken form of '*' (was subtraction sign) -- 92/3
nue -- neutral attitudinal (from nutra) -- 90/1
nuo -- reflexive conversion for second argument position -- 94/3
pio -- addition sign (replaces piu) -- 92/3
*piu -- replaced by pio -- 92/3
-ro -- forms "quality ordinals" -- 96/3
rea -- discursive 'clearly' (replaces lii) (was 'root of') -- 92/3
rie -- respectful attitudinal (from rispe) -- 90/1
*sae -- replaced by lue -- 90/1
sao -- foreign-word predicate flag -- 92/3
soi -- pseudo-onomatopoeia marker -- 90/1
sue -- onomatopoeia marker -- 90/1
suu -- 'the root of' (replaces rea) -- 92/3
sv- -- now a permitted initial consonant pair -- 93/4
-za -- (quoting-word suffix) specifies spoken form of item -- 92/3
-zi -- (quoting-word suffix) specifies written form of item -- 92/3
-zeV -- reserved for declensional affixes -- 92/3
-ziV -- reserved for declensional affixes -- 92/3
-zoV -- reserved for declensional affixes -- 92/3
-zuV -- reserved for declensional affixes -- 92/3
-zvV -- reserved for declensional affixes -- 92/3

Index of Subjects discussed

acronyms -- 93/1
animal declension -- 91/3
attitudinals -- 90/1
borrowings (no -y-) -- 92/3; 94/2
borrowings in complexes – 92/3

borrowings -- no repeated vowels in Keugru Proposal 2, 2013
categorical adjectives -- 93/4
chemical element names -- 92/3
comparatives -- 93/4
connective compounds -- 93/4
CVC-initial complexes – 94/2, Keugru Proposal 13/1
declensional affixes -- 92/3
distinctness of non-designating variables -- 96/3
ethnic declension -- 91/1; 92/3
explicit right closure -- 92/3
foreign names -- 92/3
general declension -- 91/3
hyphens in names -- 90/2
hyphens in borrowings -- 92/3
indefinite set descriptor -- 96/3
hyphens in acronyms -- 93/1
indirect designation -- 90/1
integrated claims -- 94/3
inverse vocative -- 90/2
kinds of modification -- 92/3
"LaPlace" ambiguity -- 90/2
letter closing -- 90/3; 92/3
letter opening -- 90/3
letterals -- 93/1
listing elements of a set -- 92/3
kekked predicates -- 90/3
me + variable -- 90/3
naked predas discouraged -- 92/3
negative register markers -- 90/3
NI+cu words -- 96/3
NI+PO words -- 92/3
NI+ro words -- 96/3
onomatopoeia -- 90/1
ordered lists -- 94/3
pauses -- 91/1; 93/1
predicate variables -- 94/3
prepositional comparisons -- 93/4
"protonynumcu" problem -- 90/2; 92/3
pseudo-onomatopoeia -- 90/1
quality ordinals -- 96/3
register markers - 90/1
reflexive conversions -- 94/3
serial names -- 90/2; 91/1; 13/8
scope of quantifiers -- 94/3
"slinkui" borrowings – 94/2, Keugru Proposal 13/1
stop / pause rule -- 92/3
VCCV-form borrowings -- 92/3
vocative -- 90/2; 90/3

SLK 90/1 -- Sau La Keugru from Lognet 90/1

The Academy has considered a number of grammatical proposals from Stephen Rice. Most were accepted as is, or with slight modification. Those accepted are as follows: ...'

1. Addition of gau as a strong potentiality marker. The use of ga in such sentences as Lo papre ga cabro to mean 'Paper is flammable' had led to the mistaken notion that ga was being used both as a time-free marker and as a potentiality marker in the strong, or widest possible, sense (e.g., any house can be painted blue; water is flammable in a fluorine atmosphere; non-swimmers can be taught to swim). But Lo papre ga cabro does not mean potentiality in this strong sense. It only means that this paper or some piece of similar paper has at some time, under normal conditions, demonstrated the capacity to burn. Likewise Da (ga) sucmi means that X has actually demonstrated an ability to swim, or has reported it (and is believable), not that X is actually swimming now or at any other specific time. Similarly, Da blanu hasfa means that it's blue if the light is right. Thus the implication of ga, or of no operator at all, is time-freeness. This is the sense of the Indo-European common noun: 'X is a swimmer' carries no implication that X is swimming now, just that da can swim, and does swim when the circumstances are right. Using our new strong potentiality marker, Da gau sucmi could, in contrast, be used to indicate that some X of whom Da sucmi was not true was nevertheless a healthy human who had never learned to swim, so that there was no reason to suspect that X could not realize the swimming potentiality of the human genome given enough water and instruction. As a further example of special, non-standard conditions being invoked by the strong potentiality marker but not the weak one, Lo cutri ga cabro is not true even though Lo cutri gau cabro is. For water will burn in a fluorine atmosphere. Similarly any house can be painted blue and human non-swimmers can usually be taught to swim. Thus gau enables us to make an important if fairly rare distinction between a real if yet unrealized potentiality and mere time-freeness. Like ga, gau will be a member of the PA Lexeme. We could say that ga has no more meaning than the absence of a tense marker. Like that absence, ga announces that the basic time-free sense of the Loglan predicate is to obtain; and this is simply the sense of the Indo-European common noun. What gau does is allow us to talk (economically) about those kinds of potentialities that fall outside mere time-freeness that red houses can be painted blue; that human non-swimmers have it in them to learn to swim (but not to fly); that water actually can be made to burn. It does for us what the '-able' suffix does for us in English but rather more precisely.

2. Addition of five e-final attitudinals: rie kae nue fie die, which will serve as register markers, as in Japanese, to express the speaker's attitude toward the referent of the preceding name or designation. These five CVV words derive from the primitive predicates rispe, ckano, nutra, fremi and dipri, and would correspond roughly to such English name prefixes as 'Sire', 'Sir/Madam', 'Mr./Mrs./Ms.', 'Comrade/Brother' (as in societies, unions, work-groups, etc.), and 'Dear/Darling' (as in families and friendships), except that in Loglan as in Japanese they will be used as suffixes: Hoi Farfu Die = 'O Father Dear'. These new attitudinals will be freemods like UI and HOI.

3. Addition of a mechanism for handling onomatopoeia ('shriek') and pseudo-onomatopoeia ('Surprise!').
Earlier the Word Makers' Council had suggested to the Academy that some additional onomatopoetic predicate words zbuma was the first one might be made, murmu = 'murmur', for example. The Academy has accepted the principle of regularly deriving certain kinds of predicates from the sounds of the activities they predicate, and has opened a new category of O-Prims for them. However, this facility did not cover the Rice proposal; so we have proposed to Mr. Rice that adding two new words soi and sue, analogous to lae and lue (once sae), in that they involve indirect addressing, would serve all the functions of his several proposals and do so in a way that was more harmonious with the existing structure of Loglan. Mr. Rice has accepted this suggestion and now joins us in the following solution: The sequence soi preda in a sentence will now mean that preda is not to be interpreted as a word, but as if the speaker or writer had just exhibited the state or action that is the referent of that word: soi stari ('Surprise!'), soi crano ('Smile!'). Grammatically, these expressions will be free modifiers, playing a role in the language that is very similar to that played by vocatives and attitudinals. Using the new word sue would accomplish the reverse of this. When used correctly, sue will always be followed by a gesture or sound in speech, or by a drawing or phonetic imitation in text, and this pair of elements sue and its sequel will be treated grammatically as a predicate word. For example, Le katma pa sue miao = 'The cat miaowed'. In speech the sound can be made as catlike as the speaker is capable of producing, and in both speech or text the right boundary of the gesture, sound, imitation or drawing should be marked by a pause-comma or by some stronger right-boundary mark.

The Academy also took the opportunity to rectify an old defect. Others may have noticed that the Middle Loglan word sae (circa 1977) was the only descriptor in the language that was not l-initial. That was a mistake. But clearly the new soi/sue pair were analogous to the old lae/sae pair, in that the second member of each was the inverse of the first. So we decided to rectify sae by making it l-initial, and, at the same time, make it rhyme with sue. This gave lue; so we now have lae/lue, soi/sue, and an inversing ending, -ue, that we may have occasion to use again.

SLK 90/2 -- Sau La Keugru from Lognet 90/2

The Academy has accepted an internal proposal for an inverse vocative, and has adopted solutions to the two ambiguity problems discussed in Lognet 89/1.

A vocative is a free modifier which identifies the person or object addressed. An inverse vocative is a free modifier which identifies the speaker, writer, or addressor. In English we can say any of:
I, he said, am going to the store.
I am, he said, going to the store.
I am going, he said, to the store. etc.
To provide the same literary freedom in Loglan, we have adopted the addressor word hue as the inverse of the vocative hoi. Hue can be followed by either (1) a designation of the addressor, or (2) a sentence asserting the act of addressing. Both operands must be followed by gu. For example:
Mi godzi hue da gu, le vedsia.
= I am going, he said, to the store.
Mi hue la Djan, clacue gu, godzi le vedsia.
= I, John shouted, am going to the store.
The first gu following a hue-expression marks its righthand end; so sentences containing gu's cannot be successfully used as addressor sentences. This is not a serious limitation, however, as addressor sentences are normally very short. Both hue and hoi expressions are free modifiers and may be used anywhere in a sentence. [Later mention]

Note the phonemic parallels between lae and lue, the indirect designator and its inverse, and soi and sue, the onomatopoeia operator and its inverse (introduced in SLK 90/1), and now hoi and hue, the vocative operator and its inverse.

The solution adopted for the "LaPlace" ambiguity e.g., /dapaGODzila DJAN.laPLAS/ which is hearable as either (i) Da pa godzi la Djan Laplas = 'He went to John Laplace' or (ii) Da pa godzi la Djan, la Plas = 'He went to John from Plass' is to require that serial names in which sutori (second or subsequent) elements begin with /la/, /ci/, or /hoi/ be hyphenated with the interverbal hyphen ci. Hyphenation of ordinary names (e.g. Bab ci Mykaivr) would not be incorrect, merely redundant. To resolve sutori names which seem to begin with sequences like /cici/ or /lahoi/ or /hoicila/ we strip off the first syllable, interpret it as an operator, and treat the remainder of such sequences as part of the name. Thus /laNED.ciCIyn/ = la Ned ci Ciyn = 'Ned Sheehan'; /hoiDJAN.ciHOInyhan/ = Hoi Djan ci Hoi'nyhan = 'O John Hoynahan'; and /laCElis.hoiCIlys/ = la Celis, Hoi Cilys = 'Shelley, O Shiela'. Thus the problem case above resolves correctly under its interpretation (ii); and we may now say /dapaGODzilaDJAN.cilaPLAS/ to convey the sense of interpretation (i). As before, any other particle than la, ci, or hoi before a name must be separated from it by a pause. [ More on serial names ]

The Academy also considered solutions to the "Protonynumcu" problem. [The current solution to the broader problem of borrowings in complexes (including protonynumcu) is given in SLK 92/3.]

SLK 90/3 -- Sau La Keugru from Lognet 90/3

An internal decision was made to change the grammar of vocatives by removing them from the <freemod> grameme and making them <terms>. This permits considerably more complex vocative expressions, such as the one in Lo Nurvia Logla in Lognet 90/3. The Academy also decided to accept negative register markers, as proposed by Stephen Rice. An example of their use might be: Levi penbi no rie ga no srite = 'This disrespectful pen doesn't write'.

In NB3:118, a reason was given why sentence predicates could not have a kekked head unit while descriptive predicates could. This led to some undesirable inconsistencies in parsing. The Grammarian proposed a change which makes parsing identical in both cases; this too has been accepted by the Academy. Unless final in the predicate string, the kekked predicate must now be followed by gu to separate it from any following predicate words. For example, in ka preda ki prede predi, the last predicate, predi, is the modificand of prede, and so falls within the scope of ki. So the whole expression will parse as (ka preda ki (prede predi)). In ka preda ki prede gu predi, however, predi is the modificand of which the whole kekked predicate is the modifier: (ka preda ki prede gu) predi. Such expressions may now occur in both sentence predicates and descriptive ones.

Letter opening, closing. It has been suggested that an appropriate opening for a letter to John from Bob would be Hoi Djan, the addressee ('O John'), with the closing expression being Hue Bab, a reverse vocative specifying the addressor (literally 'Said Bob'). Grammatically both are freemod utterances. [More on hue]

Me + variable. A problem was noted with Loglan 1:203 sentence 5: Lemi da gudbi letu de ('Mine is better than yours'). It was noted that the two free variables da and de, which are elsewhere always arguments, were here being used in a predicative way. Although the grammar had been specially modified to permit this, the Academy decided that the correct usage should be Lemi meda gudbi letu mede, where the free variables are converted to predicates with me. This was always grammatical, and the originally ungrammatical nature of L1:203(5) has been restored.

SLK 91/1 -- Sau La Keugru from Lognet 91/1

The Academy has accepted a suggestion by Stephen Rice that lio be allowed to take non-numerical operands, e.g., predicates and names. The objects so-designated will, of course, then be interpreted as numbers. For example, the then-current grammar (#75) did not accept the MacTeach 1 sentence *Da skatidjo lio keigei because keigei was being interpreted as an acronymic predicate, and predicates were not allowed as lio-operands. When JCB first wrote this sentence for the M1 input file, he wanted keigei to be interpreted as an abbreviation of nekeigei, i.e., as a dimensioned number. Following Rice's suggestion, this has been changed. The current grammar (#76) now accepts both predicates and names as operands of lio. Also, since not all units of measurement can be unambiguously represented by letters, it is desirable to be able to say things like lio nema dalra and lio tepife kilgramo. We can now do so.

Another Academy decision was to accept the kind of serial names which include predicates among their terms: e.g., La Nordi Amerikas and La Krist Denli (Christmas). In these instances, no comma is written between a non-final predicate used as a name and the rest of the serial, though a very short pause or glottal stop is necessary at such places in speech. In effect, with this move, we now oblige ourselves to recognize two classes of pauses in speech: (1) the very short pauses that may occur within serial names, and (2) the normally long pauses that occur at the right boundaries of serial names and, indeed, elsewhere in the language. Speaking one of these normally long pauses after Nordi in La Nordi Amerikas, or after Krist in La Krist Denli, would result in the first being treated by the parser as La Nordi, Amerikas ('The North, O America'), and the latter as La Krist, denli ('Christ is a day'). These types of names are so common in natural language that the cost of adding a second pause phoneme to resolve them is considered acceptable. [ Pauses between letterals ]

Decisions are pending on several other proposals. However, the informal proposal by Bill Gober in Lognet 91/1 (page 5) that the -e ending of the ethnic declension be awarded to a physical location, or one of the territories, of the predi a move that was also suggested by Steve Rice has such obvious merit that it has been summarily adopted by the Academy. [ More on ethnic declension ]

SLK 91/3 -- Sau La Keugru from Lognet 91/3

After more than a year of public discussion and private deliberation, Dr. McIvor's proposal for a general declension, one that could apply to nearly any predicate of the language, (see Lognet 89/1:6) has been withdrawn as involving too much re-engineering. The academy was impressed with Bill Gober's "shoot the engineer" argument in Lognet 91/1:4.

We agree with Bill that our current objective should be to use and perfect the language, not to re-engineer it. We were similarly unanimous in our judgment that the animal declension also an idea of Dr. McIvor's was worth adding. We concluded that it would have very small effects on the affix system, and that its other effects were probably benign.

As a result of our adoption of the animal declension, a generic animal predicate (for any age or sex) will now always end in -u regardless of its previous derivation. The word for the female of the species will end in -a, the adjectival form that means 'like (that species)' will end in -e, the infant form in -i, and the male form in -o. Hence berci = 'lamb', berco = 'ram', berca = 'ewe', berce = 'ovine', and bercu = 'sheep'. Complexes can still be made, of course; e.g., ?junkasna could well mean 'heifer'. Any CVC-form affixes that had been assigned to the old predicate will remain in force and will apply as before to the generic animal; e.g., horkarti = 'horse cart'. Where it is necessary to make a sex or age distinction, as in 'heifer', the long form should be used. Thus either ?cinkasno or ?menkasni could mean 'baby bull'.

SLK 92/3 -- Sau La Keugru from Lognet 92/3

A number of proposals have been considered in the past few months, and decisions have been reached on most of them.

Jeremy Dunn has proposed a number of additions to the tense system. The tense system is being examined, but no decision has yet been reached on whether extensions such as Dunn has proposed are needed. The specific words proposed were rejected as not following the general word-forming pattern in Loglan.

A minor change has been approved in the bracketing of go expressions by the parser, better to agree with the definition of go in Loglan 1. [ Da hasfa go balci la Djek. parses as da (hasfa go (balci (la Djek))) instead of da (hasfa go balci) (la Djek) ].

The Academy has clarified the use of hue. When it refers to the speaker or writer, as in a signature, it is used without a descriptor (as in hue Bab). When it refers to a third person, it is used with a descriptor (hue la Djan, hue le mrenu).

The scope of lao has been extended to include foreign names other than Linnaeans where it is desired to retain the original spelling, e.g., Lao Alzheimer, Lao Tokyo. The word sao has been accepted to fill the same role for predicates (as in Lo Nurvia Logla in Lognet 92/1 ). Sao is normally used only on single words. In both cases the non-Loglan word or string of words must now be terminated by a comma or a gu.

An operator for designating sets by listing their elements has been introduced. It is lau, takes any string of lexical elements as its operand, and can be explicitly closed, when necessary, with lua. An example is in the first sentence of our Lo Nurvia Logla in Lognet 92/3. It is usually used for making lists of arguments. A word to introduce ordered lists is probably needed as well, but has not been chosen as yet. [Additional mention of lau and lua in SLK 94/3. ]

Until further notice, the Keugru has decided to discourage the use of naked predas as answers, as shown (here and there) in Loglan 1, suggesting that full though shortened utterances are stylistically preferable. Thus, in the interchange "La Djan, he?" "Da kapta" is a better answer than "Kapta". The Keugru is currently considering other ways of solving this clarity problem.

One of us (Steve) pointed out that we have no way of pronouncing '*' to indicate an incorrect Loglan formation. The word niu has been adopted as the pronunciation of this sign, cognate to liu for single-word quotation. Since niu was already assigned to the subtraction operator, but was as yet little used, the word for the subtraction sign was changed to nio and the corresponding addition sign (formerly piu) was changed to pio.

NI+PO words. It was decided to permit numbers (NI words) as well as LE words to be joined to PO words, thus permitting structures like nepo 'an event of', nepu 'a property of'.

Bill Gober has made a number of proposals. Firstly, he objected to the three chemical elements with unloglandic spelling (ytrio, yterbio, and wlframo). On being reassured by a chemist member that it was not necessary for the chemical symbol letters to occur in the word for the element, it was agreed to change these to itrrio, itrrbio, and ulframo.

Because of a subsequent decision it was agreed that the letter y should never occur in borrowings. So another element-word (dysprosio) containing the letter y has also been changed [to disprrosio?].

In Lognet 91/1 Bill suggested adopting a set of affixes to extend the ethnic declension . This was tabled at the time as very limited use was foreseen. It has now been decided to reserve a few currently unused CVV-sets for use in extending declensions to complexes, should this be found useful. Bill has suggested reserving the zeV, ziV, zoV, zuV, and zvV sets for possible declensional use. It is anticipated that these declensional affixes will also be used with all types of predicates, that is, with complexes and borrowings as well as with primitives. The current animal and ethnic declensions will continue to be used.

Bill suggests that a new dialect of Loglan could be promulgated for use with beginners or machines, namely one in which all pauses were replaced or accompanied by explicit right-closures; for example, La Djan, gu mrenu would be an utterance in this dialect. A beginner could request da's teacher to use such heavily gu-ed speech by saying Eo meliugu 'Please be gu-ish' or something similarly suggestive. We accepted such explicitly right-closed speech as an optional style that might well be useful in certain contexts.

The Academy is considering making optionally explicit each of the numerous kinds of modification intentions which occur with some frequency between modifiers and their modificands. This might mean, for example, putting some new infix x in Da horski x janto when 'Da hunts on horseback' is intended, and some other infix y in Da simba y janto when 'Da hunts lions as prey' is the modification intended. Comments from logli on possible implementations of this plan are welcome.

Two of us (Bill Gober and Steve Rice) independently proposed changes (in Lognet 91/3) with the intention of eliminating the two-pause rule (introduced in SLK 91/1), which we now propose to call a stop/pause rule. A break between names, names and predicates used as names, or between a word ending with a vowel and one beginning with one, can be a glottal stop, and is written as a comma-less space between the words, as in La Ailin or in La Djan Pol Djonz. A pause which is grammatical, however, and which may be replaced by gu, is always longer than the silences we are now calling stops, and will always be written as a comma followed by a space. The proposals considered did not eliminate all need for the pause/stop distinction, however, and were consequently rejected, on the grounds that unmarked forms are simplest, and should be allowed wherever possible. The Academy agreed, however, that redundant hoi's, gu's, and ga's would be considered discretionary, and not bad usage. In addition, the form Le preda, prede ('The preda is a prede'), while technically correct, would now be considered bad usage, and that in human-to-human communications, the form Le preda ga prede should be used. Likewise, in forms like La Nordi Amerikas, a hoi should always be used if the final name is intended to be a vocative, as in Godzi la Nordi, Hoi Djan ('Go to the North, O John').

Bill also pointed out that the previous Academy rule that complexes with a borrowing in final position were not recommended was unnecessarily restrictive. In the course of considering this problem, the whole question of incorporating borrowings into complexes was reviewed, and a new and exceptionless rule has been adopted. In future, complexes which include borrowings will be made by linking the whole borrowing to its neighbor(s) which may themselves be borrowings, other predicates, or the short forms of primitives called affixes, with the hyphen 'y'. Consequently, 'y' cannot now be permitted to occur within a borrowing. This in fact is the principal reason why *ytrio and kin must be disallowed and respelled without 'y', e.g., itrrio. Thus, in future a 'y' occurring in a predicate will always be a hyphen, e.g. milyamperi (composed of <mil(ti) + y + amperi> and pronounced [mee-luh-ahm-PER-ee]), protoniynuu ([proh-toh-nee-uh-NOO-oo]), iglluymao ([ee-gll-OO-uh-mough]). Since CVV-form affixes linked directly to a borrowing with 'y' are interpreted as letter-word prefixes, the long form of the primitive affix must be used when this interpretation is to be avoided; e.g. santyinhuiti, not Saiyinhuiti; for the latter means 'is an S-Inuit', not the 'silent-Inuit' successfully conveyed by the former. [ See further discussion of CVC complexes. ]

.You might have noticed the strange double-'l'-ing in the word iglluymao as the new way of making 'igloo-maker'. This is because Bill also discovered that VCCV-form words are ambiguous when CC is a permissible initial, as in *iglu. When certain attachments are present, as in *adjayaspherage, ('Asian asparagus') the initial /a/ drops off. These words have been proscribed. There were only four of them in the dictionary, fortunately. When repairing these words, we decided that if one of the consonants in the CC-pair was 'l' or 'r', it should be doubled (thus, igllu, akrre) and that the double-continuant thus produced should join 'y' in making never-stressed syllables and so pass on its stress to the preceding syllable; thus [EE-gll-oo] and [AH-krr-eh]. If neither consonant in the CC was 'l' or 'r', an 'h' was prepended: thus *adja and *asne became hadja, hasne, and so primitive in form. Consequently, 'Asian-asparagus' is now hadjyaspherage.

Randall Holmes has suggested the addition of laa (Lo Lerci, Lognet 91/1) as in Laa preda to mean 'the unique object of which preda holds (if there is such an object, otherwise the empty set)', and lee as in Lee preda to mean 'an arbitrarily chosen object satisfying preda (if there is such an object, otherwise the empty set)'. The Academy adopted these suggestions from our lodtua.

Randall also suggested a character quotation operator to be used like the word quotor liu in syntax. He pointed out that, as it stands, liu tei refers to the word tei, not to the character 't', and that there was no way to refer to the character 't'! The lodtua and the sacdou jointly proposed that we also needed a way to indicate, when quoting, whether we were referring to the spoken or the written form of the quotand. The Academy considered its options and adopted lii for the new character quotation operator, taking the phoneme string /lii/ away from the discursive meaning 'clearly' (kliri) in order to do so. The 'clearly' discursive modifier has now been given the CVV form rea, derived from frena. Rea had been previously defined as the mathematical operator 'the root of', which has been little used to date. This operator has been reassigned to suu, a phonemic relative of sua, 'to the power of'.

When a speaker/writer wants to differentiate between the written and spoken forms of some linguistic string or element, da may now do so by attaching one of the suffixes -zi or -za to any of the quotation words li, lii, liu, lie to make that distinction: -zi for the written form, -za for the spoken one. Thus, liuzi Tai (/liUzi.TAI/) refers to the written word "Tai", while liuza tai (/liUza.TAI/) refers to the phoneme string /tai/. When the speaker/writer is indifferent to the mode of delivery, as da will most often be, da will still be able to use the unmarked form liu Tai as we do now. Clearly, when these compound quotation operators are used, they must be separated from their quotands by pauses, as shown above. To quote the suffix -zi itself, it must be separated from its quotor by a pause, e.g., /liU.zi/, for without a pause, /liUzi/ would designate the written form of the next-occurring word.

SLK 93/1 -- Sau La Keugru from Lognet 93/1

The principal subject being considered by the Keugru at the moment is the handling of acronyms especially distinguishing them from strings of letter-variables. A tentative plan for restoring the TAI series to the set of variables available for anaphora a group of words which we have begun to call proarguments on the model of the English word 'pronoun' has been provisionally adopted and implemented in a new LIP. Briefly, the rule now is that vowel letterals when initial in an acronym, e.g., the [A] in [AFL] (henceforth we will use square brackets in this column to indicate written forms) will now be pronounced in their full three-letter VCV shapes. Thus [A] alone will be pronounced /Ama/ and the whole acronym [AFL] will be read aloud as /amaFAIlai/; for the acronymic word is still a predicate and thus penultimately stressed. [AFL] may still be written out as [AmaFaiLai], of course, as a textual alternative, in Loglan, to writing it as an acronym.

We anticipate that the one-letter vowel forms V may still be used to pronounce non-initial vowel letterals in acronyms, pretty much as described in NB3:50-54. Thus [Fe], the chemical symbol for iron, will probably still be pronounced /FAIze/which is /fai+z+e/, where /z/ is the acronymic hyphen and optionally written [Faize]; although the role of hyphen /z/ is still under study.

In fact, the whole rule-set for generating acronyms in writing and resolving them in speech has come under review. A satisfactory set of rules will enable our ears to distinguish properly formed acronyms from strings of letter-words in speech: [AFL] from [A F L], thus leading the resolver to compound some strings of little words and leave others uncompounded. As a temporary expedient, LIP is new using a brute force solution to this problem and requiring that any two adjacent letter variables be separated by a pause. Later, when stress and disyllabicity are added to the information in the input stream, LIP can use a more subtle and natural strategy for making the same discriminations.

The resolver that will do this work for LIP is still being talked about. So the Keugru is not yet ready to publish the new rule set for the formation of acronyms as contrasted with variable strings, and the production of both in speech. Please be patient with us as we wrestle with this pleasant little problem.
At the moment LIP only accommodates textual input. Eventually we all want it to be able to accept phonemic input as well, that is, a stream of textual signals that accurately represents the acoustic structure of Loglan speech. We hope to be able to report out a version of LIP which will be able to accept this kind of input within a year. We believe it will be a reasonably short step from the LIP that can accept a stream of phonemes, and uniquely resolve them into Loglan utterances, to the LIP that can actually listen to and resolve audible Loglan speech.

SLK 93/4 -- Sau La Keugru from Lognet 93/4

We have a couple of migrations of CVV words to report; and several minor changes in our morphological (word-making) rules have been adopted. But the major news in this column is that several new usages for expressing comparisons have been invented.

(1) The Keugru has accepted a proposal to replace cue in the pair ge/cue with geu. Geu is a better mnemonic for ge; and the ge/cue pair is little used, so the change causes minimal disturbance.

(2) It has been pointed out that the words svera and kin for things Swedish are illegal because sv- is not on the list of permitted initial consonant pairs (Table 2.1 in L1). The Keugru has decided to add sv- to the list of permissible initials, thus legalizing svera and kin ex post facto.
-- This addition required no changes in our existing word-list. If the proposal to accept sv- initially had required changing many complexes, then it probably wouldn't have been adopted. In general the Keugru is now doing impact studies to assure itself that the changes it adopts have acceptably small impacts on the existing structure of the language. Typically this means that the changes it adopts are additive rather than corrective. However, the Keugru is still accepting corrective proposals if the change required in the current habits of our logli is negligibly small. For example, the next change falls in that category.

(3) The case tag mao (from cmalo 'small/-er'), which was originally intended to be used for the lessers in greater/lesser than relationships, confusingly reminds some people of the very common affix -mao (from madzo 'make'). The Keugru has accepted a proposal to replace this case tag with jui (from junti 'young/-er') on the grounds that case tags are, as yet, very infrequently used and so there is still time to remove this source of a potentially bothersome confusion.

The rest of this report deals with comparatives and related topics, which the Keugru has been wrestling with a lot lately.

(4) The Keugru has accepted a proposal to allow the creation of categorical adjectives from predicates that are essentially comparative. Many of the Loglan predicates that correspond to natural language adjectives are essentially comparative: e.g., corta means '... is shorter than ... by interval ...', meucli means '... is more manly than ...' (although of course the sutori places are often left empty). I.e., both shortness and manliness admit of degrees.

The new convention allows these comparatives to be made categorical or absolute; i.e., the quality is either present or absent. The categorical form of such predicates is formed by prefixing kle- (from klesi 'class') to the preda or one of its affixes: klecoa '... is short (period)', klemeucli '... is manly (period)'. Such predicates are, of course, always one-place.

(5) The example word meucli ('man-like') '... is more manly than ...' also illustrates a way of forming comparative predicates with the suffix -cli from clika '... is like ... in feature ...'. However, it's been discovered that the -cli move isn't enough, because it uses just the first place of the base predicate. Sometimes we need to express the first two places of a predicate in its comparative form. For example, ckano '... is kind to ...': ckacli '... is kinder than ...' doesn't answer the question "Kinder to whom?".

To solve this problem the Keugru has adopted the suffix -mou from the primitive mordu '... is more than ... in dimension ...'. We adopt the convention that -mou will always make a four-place predicate in which the first two places correspond to the first two places of the modifying predicate and the last two places repeat the relationship of the first two but at a comparatively lower level. Thus, Da ckamou de di do = 'X is kinder to Y than Z is kind to W' and Da framou de di do = 'X is more of a father to Y than Z is a father to W'. Commonly, one or more of the places will contain the same designation: Da ckamou de di de = 'X is kinder to Y than Z is to Y'; Da ckamou de da di = 'X is kinder to Y than X is to Z'; and Da ckamou mi mi mi = 'X is kinder to me than I am to myself'. The -mou convention has some interesting implications for case tags. The Keugru is considering these implications and will report on them in a future Lognet.
-- The Keugru is also considering whether to adopt affixes, parallel to -cli and -mou, that compare two arguments and find them equal.

(6) Loglan currently has a modal operator which expresses equality. Ciu (from ciktu '... equals ... in dimension ...') is grammatically a PA word and means 'as much as/to the same degree as'. The lack of a similar modal operator for inequality has been keenly felt, and the Keugru has decided to change the meaning of the modal mou (derived of course from mordu), which now means 'as well as/in addition to', to mean 'more than/to a greater degree than'. The Keugru feels that the UI-word sui ('also/ moreover') can perform most of mou's former functions.

The two PA words ciu and mou now permit what might be called prepositional comparisons for both equality and inequality: Ciu lo bludi la Mars, redro = 'To the same extent as blood, Mars is red' ('Mars is as red as blood'); La Sam, farfu mi mou la Djorj = 'Sam is a father to me, more than George is' ('Sam is more of a father to me than George is'). A word of caution: These modal phrases are sentence modifiers; so they can make comparisons only with whatever is in the first place of the sentence predicate.

(7) The Keugru is considering whether to adopt another modal word for 'less than'. For the time being, all six possible comparisons (including 'less than') are covered by ciu and mou and their compounds:
ciu equal to
nociu not equal to
mou greater than
nomou less than or equal to
numou less than
nunomou greater than or equal to

[Some of the following Loglan sentences and corresponding English translations differ from the text that was actually printed in Lognet 93/4. This is because a careful analysis of <connective>+PA compounds has persuaded the Keugru that the PA component should be given its "prepositional" reading; only if the PA word is followed by a pause (comma or scope-closure) can it be read as an "adverb" (in which case it is still understood as a prepositional phrase, with an implicit time or place designator as the object of the preposition). This section (8) has been rewritten to reflect this decision. In a future report (sometime in 1996), the Keugru will discuss the principle of "elimination predicates" for PA words, which will clarify this tricky feature.]

(8) For a long time, Loglan's grammar has allowed compounds made from a connective (loosely, a preposition) to form another connective. The first uses of this move involved the PA words for time and space, e.g., La Meris, epa la Djan, pa godzi le ckela = 'Mary and+before John went to the school'. (They both went to school -- e -- and Mary went before -- pa -- John.) [Approximately the same meaning can also be written "adverbially" as La Meris, efa, la Djan, pa godzi le ckela = 'Mary and+afterwards, John went to the school'. (They both went to school -- e -- but Mary went and then afterwards -- fa -- John also went.)
But it's been noticed that ciu and mou are also PA words and so can also be attached to connectives in this fashion. Connective compounds made with these comparative words allow the speaker to make comparisons very flexibly, and between arguments occupying any place of a predicate. E.g., Le nu balci pa harko mia lopo crina, emou lo brize = 'The building sheltered us from rain and to a greater extent than from wind' ('The building sheltered us more from rain than from wind').
Note that the connective part of emou is in full force here. The building provided shelter against both rain and wind it was just better shelter against the rain. This means that comparisons made using comparative connectives may not have the same meaning as comparisons made with comparative predicates. For example, for Da, emou de mrenu = 'X is more of a man than Y' to be true, both X and Y must be men; Da meucli de = 'X is manlier than Y' can be true even if neither X nor Y is a man.
Comparative connectives can also be formed with sheks and keks. E.g., Da fremi cenumou matma mi = 'She's less of a friend than a mother to me' (= 'She's a friend and more of a mother to me'); ('She's friend-and-mother, but friend-less-than-mother, to me' = 'She's a friend and more of a mother to me'); Da kemou fremi ki matma mi = 'She's both more-than-friend-of, and a mother to, me' ('She is both, but more than friend, a mother to me'); or Da ke fremi kinumou matma mi = 'She's both a friend of and less-than-mother to, me' ('She is both, but friend less than mother to me'.)
In principle these compounds can be formed using connectives other than e, ce, and ke. To date, the few examples produced using a, o, or u type connectives have been contrived, fanciful, or both. The Keugru urges the Loglan community to experiment with the other connectives, and to report the results of their experiments to the Keugru or in letters to Lognet. The remarkable thing is that, despite all these usage inventions and additions to our word-making conventions, except for tweaking LIP to make it accept the shek and kek comparatives, not one single grammatical change in the language has been involved. The grammar of Loglan does indeed appear to be settling down.

SLK 94/2 -- Sau La Keugru from Lognet 94/2

The Keugru has adopted a proposal for a change in morphology (word-making). This proposal requires that any CVC-initial complex be hyphenated at the first joint if the two consonants on the two sides of that joint (C/C) form a permitted initial consonant-pair. For example, paslinkui 'ancestor' becomes pasylinkui, hyphenating the s+l joint, while the currently prohibited *tosmabru becomes legal as tosymabru. Borrowings cannot have an initial CV segment followed by a permissible initial CC and so are unaffected by this change.

This change gives us two important benefits:

(A) It simplifies complex-building. Previously, in a complex made from three or more primitives, a CCV affix was always legal anywhere, and an initial CVV affix had always to be hyphenated with 'r' or 'n'; but before this change it was hard to decide whether an initial CVC affix was legal or had to be hyphenated. With the change, that question becomes easier to answer: if the two consonants at the first joint form a permitted initial consonant pair, always hyphenate it with 'y'.

There are other rules for hyphenating CVC affixes which still need to be followed, of course. For example, if any post-CVC joint forms a double consonant, or a double sibilant, or a voiceless consonant before its voiced variant, or certain prohibited triple consonants, it will still have to be hyphenated. In other words, the other rules for hyphenation at C/C junctions still have to be followed.

(B) Many more borrowings are now permitted. Slinkui is the name of a common sort of attempted borrowing that was illegal before this change because a preceding little word would turn it into a complex. Thus *pa slinkui resolved as the apparent complex ?paslinkui. But the new rule makes *paslinkui illegal. So with this change, slinkui and kin will become legal borrowings.
The Keugru probably hasn't worked through all of the implications of this new rule, or some of its finer details. Watch this space for future reports.

SLK 94/3 -- Sau La Keugru from Lognet 94/3

The Keugru has adopted a number of proposals since the last report.

Ordered Lists: The Keugru has decided that lou shall be the descriptor introducing an ordered list, and that luo shall be the corresponding terminator (if needed). Note that these little words are very similar to lau and lua, defined as the descriptor and terminator for itemizing the elements of a set in the Sau La Keugru in Lognet 92/3; the two pairs' spellings differ only in using 'a' for the unordered list, and 'o' for the ordered one; this should make the two pairs easy for speakers of English or a Romance language to remember.

When should a logli use lau...lua, and when lou...luo? In logical or mathematical contexts, the difference between a set and an ordered list is clear, and those who want to write on such subjects will know what to do. But outside of formal contexts, we can use the set construction to describe a collection of individual items as something we wish to regard as a single (albeit compound) entity.
Lau la Djan, la Djein, la Djordj, la Djo'sefin, lua ga skuflo plegru.
'John, Jane, George, and Josephine make a successful team.'
Note that this does not imply that John, Jane, George, or Josephine is a successful individual, just that they are members of a team which plays successfully.
When we list the items in a set, they have to be mentioned in some order because of the linear nature of language; but the order of mention is not significant as far as defining the set is concerned, and naming an element twice is unwise since it doesn't actually change the membership of the set, and confuses the listener.
In an ordered list, on the other hand, the order of mention of the items is significant -- the same elements in a different sequence constitute a different list -- and duplicated items are meaningful. An ordered list can be used for an argument whose description is a particular sequence of individual items:
Lou la Arizonas, la Nevadas, la Ai'dyhous, luo ga rutma (sau) la Me'ksikos, (dio) la Ka'nadas, (veu) site merke gunpai.
'(First) Arizona, (then) Nevada, (then) Idaho is a route from Mexico to Canada going through only three American states.'
Again, the predicate applies to the compound entity, not to the individuals that make it up. Nevada is not a route.

IKOU Now in ICA Lexeme: The Keugru has approved a proposal to include ikou-type words in the ICA lexeme, rather than the I lexeme to which they once belonged. Sentences connected with eesheks (ica and kin) form connected sentences, which can in turn be connected with keks (ka...ki and kin) and vice versa. When a word in the I lexeme comes along, however, it terminates the preceding utterance, including any kekked sentence within it, and begins a new utterance. So causally connected (ikou-type) sentences could not be embedded in kekked sentences until ikou words were moved into the ICA category. This has now been done and appears to introduce no complications. For example,
La Djan, pa clucea la Maris, ikou Dai vizka la Mai, la Luvr; inoca -- Dai no norvia.
'John fell in love with Mary because he saw her in (against the backdrop of) the Louvre, only if he's not blind.' This sentence now parses with the causal connection inside the logical one, which means that this causal relation is being asserted to hold only if John is not blind. Replacing the names with variables, the structure is now
([da {clucea de}] ikou [da {vizka <de di>}]) inoca (da [no norvia])
Before this move it would have parsed as
*(da [clucea de]) ikou ([da {vizka <de di>}] inoca [da {no norvia}])
The (odd) claim of the latter, however, can still be made with keks:
La Djan, pa clucea la Maris, ikou kanoi Dai vizka Mai, la Luvr, ki Dai no norvia.
'John fell in love with Mary because, if he saw her in the Louvre, then he's not blind.'
This sentence claims, astonishingly, that John's falling in love was caused by the rather trivial logical relationship between his seeing something and not being blind. Falling in love must be very easy for John! Or perhaps the speaker is a logician, soi crano, who sees powerful causes in even common logical patterns!

Scope of Quantifiers: The Keugru has adopted a proposal of Dr. Brown's that the scope of a quantifier marked with goi be specified to be just the atomic sentence that follows. An atomic sentence is one which consists of a predicate and its arguments (both of which may be connected forms), but does not contain two (or more) sentences that have been logically connected with eesheks or keks.
La Djan, mrenu ('John is a man')
is an atomic sentence, and a simple one.
La Lindberg, pa briga ce famva mrenu go kincle fleti la Nuiork, la Frans, napa sose nirne.
'Lindbergh was a brave and famous man who flew alone from New York to France sixty-seven years ago.'
is also an atomic sentence. But
La Sokrates, humnu, inoca Sai morcea.
'Socrates is human, only if he is mortal.'
is a molecular sentence, not an atomic one. (Notice that the generic sense of 'human' is now humnu. Ever since the animal declension was added in 1991, see SLK 91/3, the 1982 word humni has meant 'a human infant'.)
It was discovered that the Loglan Interactive Parser (LIP) already brackets utterances according to the rule that the scope of goi is the atomic sentence that follows it. That is, if one writes
Raba goi, ba humnu, inoca ba morcea.
LIP will parse it as
([raba goi] [ba humnu]) inoca (ba morcea)
which shows that the ba morcea phrase has been left hanging by itself outside the quantifier construction. In order to apply a quantifier to the whole of a logically-connected sentence (which is, after all, the most common use of quantification), a kek-construction should be used; and before a kek-construction, the marker goi is no longer needed. Thus, if one does wish to say 'Everyone who is human is mortal', one should now write
Raba kanoi ba humnu ki ba morcea.
Note that sheks (ca-form connectives) and eks (a-form ones) between predicates make connected predicates but not connected sentences; so
Raba goi, ba humnu, noa morcea.
in which noa is an ek, is analyzed, plausibly enough, as
(Raba goi) (ba [humnu noa morcea])
For all x, x is human only-if mortal.

Me and Mea: The Institute's Lodtua (Logic-worker) has convinced the Keugru that there would be great logical power in more precisely delineating the semantics of the predicate-forming little word me, and introducing a new allolex mea of the ME lexeme to carry the metaphorical, -ish-ish sense of the original me.
After this change, me will define a predicate, written me <argument>, whose extension is the current designatum or designata of <argument>. Thus Da mele mrenu = 'X is one of the men (I have in mind)'. Presumably one would use mele preda only after le preda had actually acquired current designata by being used. The logical power of this new instrument is suggested by the example of se menei = 'Seven n's' (seven of the ones that have been referred to by 'n'), which is now distinguished from senei, which is still a dimensioned number meaning '7 years' (unless, of course, nei has been locally redefined to denote some other unit of measure). Distinguishing between *se nei, which is how we once said se menei, and the dimensioned number senei had become a serious morphological problem; and the redefinition of me solved it. If one wanted to say seven 'n's i.e., seven instances of the letter 'n' one would say selii nei [seh-lee-EE-nay]. (Notice that stress is penultimate in these word-like phrases.)
Much of the former meaning of me (Loglan 1, p.232) is given to mea: Ta meala Ainctain (/tameAla.AINctain/) = 'That's Einsteinian'. Note, however, that in sentences in which the new me-constructed preda is a modifier -- e.g., Ta mela Ford, tcaro -- me may still be used instead of mea because the predicate made with me acquires metaphorical status by virtue of its use as a modifier. In abbreviations of such remarks, that is, when the me-ed preda becomes either a modificand or the only preda, the explicitly metaphorical allolex mea must be used: thus Ta meala Ford (/tameAla.FORD/) = 'That's a Ford'. The extra syllable is the small price we pay for this new logical resource. There is the hazard, admittedly, that absentmindedly saying Ta mela Ford will mean something quite different, perhaps 'That's Mr. Ford/a Ford company/a member of the Ford family/etc.' depending on the current designatum of la Ford.)

Dui and Dua: The predicate variables dui and dua refer to a preceding predicate expression -- dui, to the last one back, and dua, to some earlier one -- and can be used to avoid having to repeat a lengthy phrase. However, when that preceding predicate expression is followed by one or more argument terms, it hasn't been clear whether the predicate variable represented just the predicate, or the entire <predexp + termset>. The Keugru has determined that, indeed, the dui or dua are to be taken as copies of the predicate plus its following arguments, except that, if the dui/dua is itself followed by arguments, these are taken to replace the arguments in the referenced <termset> from right to left.
Le ditca pa kejkao srite le kenti le tokri barta. I le stude pa dui lesei papre.
The teacher carefully wrote the question on the chalk-board; and the students did so (i.e., carefully wrote the question) on their paper(s).
Le ditca pa kejkao srite le kenti le tokri barta. I le stude pa dui le retpi lesei papre.
The teacher carefully wrote the question on the chalk-board; and the students (carefully wrote) the answer on their papers.
Le ditca pa kejkao srite le kenti le tokri barta. I le stude pa dui le retpi bei.
The teacher carefully wrote the question on the chalk-board; and the students(carefully wrote) the answer on b (the chalk-board).
If the referenced predicate had further unfilled argument-places that one wanted to make explicit in the dui-repetition, one would generally tack them on at the end and mark them with the appropriate case-tags.
Ro pernu fa flemai traci le jmikeosei. I mi dui sau la Bastn.
Many people will airplane-travel to the meeting; and I will (also), from Boston.
The place-structure of traci is '... travels to ... from ... via ...' . The first statement mentioned only the second or 'to' argument le jmikeosei; to add the third or 'from' argument to the dui statement, we had to use the case-tag sau (the mark of sources/origins/points of departure) in front of la Bastn or it would have replaced the second argument mentioned in the original sentence, and therefore would have meant that I would fly to Boston. Of course, one can avoid case-tagging altogether by actually filling all the argument-places of the referenced predicate (with replacements or with pro-arguments) and then appending further arguments. If we had wished to do that in the last example, the second sentence could have been:
I mi dui jei la Bastn
And I will (travel) to j (the meeting) from Boston.

Ize, Izeci, Izege: Ize has now been accepted as a member of the ICA lexeme, izeci of the ICACI lexeme, and izege of the ICAGE lexeme. The -ci and -ge forms play the same role in grouping their operands as simple ci and ge play in predicate strings. (See Loglan 1, secs 3.12, 3.17.) Logli will know that ze used between predicates, as in Le plebarta ga blabi ze nigro, creates a single claim about a mixed condition: 'The playing-board is (a mixture of) black-and-white.' By analogy with this sense-mixing and claim-integrating operation, when ize is used between sentences, it generates a single claim that the two sentences joined by it are jointly true, presumably at the same time and the same place:
Da pa felda le botsu le vlako, ize da pa bloda le hedto le botsu. Inukou da pa flimorcea le vlako.
She fell from the boat into the lake; and (at the same time and place) hit her head on the boat. Because of this (joint event) she drowned in the lake.
We can infer from this statement that it was the joint occurrence of the blow to the head and her falling into the water the mixture or joint occurrence of these multiple causes that caused her to drown. If she had fallen without hitting her head, she would have swum to the dock; and if she hadn't fallen into the water after hitting her head, she would have regained consciousness in a few minutes.
Notice that ice treats the matter of the drowning quite differently:
Da pa felda le botsu le vlako, ice da pa bloda le hedto le botsu. Inukou da pa flimorcea le vlako.
She fell from the boat into the lake; and she hit her head on the boat. Because of each of these two events she drowned in the lake.
The ice-connected claim is that either cause would have been sufficient to cause the drowning, i.e., that they are independent causes. Notice that we can expand the ice-sentence into a conjunction of two independent claims:
Da pa felda le botsu le vlako, inukou da pa flimorcea le vlako.
She fell from the boat into the lake; and therefore she drowned in the lake. and
Da pa bloda le hedto le botsu, inukou da pa flimorcea le vlako.
She hit her head on the boat; and therefore she drowned in the lake.
The ize-sentence, in contrast, because it makes a single claim about a multiple cause, cannot be so expanded. ICA connections in Loglan group from the left, so the passage above has the structure
[(She fell) ize (she hit)] Inukou (she drowned)
If we wanted to announce the unhappy result at the beginning, but still say that it was caused by the joint occurrence of the contributory events, we would need to use izeci to override the left-grouping:
Da pa flimorcea le vlako, ikou da pa felda le botsu le vlako, izeci da pa bloda le hedto le botsu.
(She drowned) ikou [(she fell) izeci (she hit)]
Again we have a single claim about a joint cause. We could also use ikouge to accomplish the same result:
Da pa flimorcea le vlako, ikouge da pa felda le botsu le vlako, ize da pa bloda le hedto le botsu.
(She drowned) ikouge [(she fell) ize (she hit)]

Reflexive Conversion: Also on the recommendation of our Lodtua, the little words nuo fuo juo have been adopted to designate reflexive conversions of the predicate to which they're applied. They convert a predicate into a new one with one fewer arguments, where the place of the omitted argument is understood to denote the same person/object/abstraction as the first argument does. Formulaically,
Da nuo preda de di.
means
Da preda da de di.
and similarly
Da fuo preda de di = Da preda de da di;
Da juo preda de di = Da preda de di da.
Examples:
La Djan pa nuo vlaci vi le vlako.
John washed himself in the lake.
La Djein fa fuo takna leDai kicmu.
Jane will talk about herself to her doctor.
Lopo nuo mormao ga po lidzao.
Suicide is a sin.

SLK 96/3 -- Sau La Keugru from Lognet 96/3

The Academy has three matters to report this time, two Little Word adoptions and a usage clarification. Several other proposals -- including the long-awaited subjunctive operator -- are very near adoption, and will, we hope, be ready to report in LN 97/1.

1. NI+ro, The "Quality Ordinal"

In Loglan 1, there are two -rV-form suffixes that attach to members of the NI lexeme to form "numerical predicates". They are:
NI+ra ...is a NI-some, a NI-member subset of set ..., e.g., tera lea simbu 'is a threesome of lions', a cardinal predicate. (The 2nd place of cardinal predicates was not recognized in L1.)
NI+ri ...is the 1st/2nd/3rd/NI-th element in series ..., e.g., teri le pazlia 'is third in the queue', an ordinal predicate.

The Keugru has decided to adopt a proposal of Robert McIvor's that we form a third series of numerical predicates:
NI+ro ...is the best, or highest/2nd best, or next highest/3rd best/NI-th best/..../least best, or worst in quality...among candidates/members of set...

We believe this suffix will solve the long-outstanding problem of the "superlative" in an elegant and yet easily understood way.

The most commonly used member of the new -ro series will, of course, be nero, which means 'first in quality/value/rank/significance/importance ... among ...'. Toro therefore means 'second in quality, etc.'; tero, 'third in quality, etc'; and so on, down to raro, which, surprisingly enough, means 'least/worst in quality, etc.', since, with -ro, we are, in effect, "counting down".

Grammatically, the NI+ro words are predicates. So, when used to modify another predicate, nero, for example, forms the superlative of the attribute denoted by that predicate in that candidate set; toro, the next highest in that quality in that set; and so on. Obtaining the superlative expressions made so easily with nero was, in fact, the main motivation for adopting this new form, since no other formulation of the superlative that was both easy to understand and logically manipulable had ever been found.

In general, the new -ro forms are intended to express the degree to which some qualitative attribute is judged to apply in some set of candidates ('bluest, highest, sweetest, best'), and this will contrast with the ordinal positions of elements in well-defined linear series, such as sequences of numbers or people standing in line. These older ordinals will, of course, still be expressed by predicates made with -ri.

While words made with -ra and -ri are two-place predicates, the new ones made with -ro will have three places. Thus, considered in full, NI+ro means '... is NI-th in quality ... among candidates/members of candidate set ...'. Mu nero! is therefore a meaningful utterance, though an incomplete one, and expresses the sports fan's boast: 'We're Number 1!' Used in a two-place expression -- and so still incompletely -- nero can express the preposterous claim Mi nero raba! 'I'm best at everything!' The complete form, though probably rarely used, will specify the candidate-set as well as the property: Da toro lopu pligudbi guo lea hasfa ji napa nu sifdui mi. = 'X is the second best in suitability among the houses found by me'. Much of the grammatical elaborateness can be avoided, of course, by using the NIro word as a predicate modifier.

Since NIro is a predicate word, it functions like an English adjective when it modifies a noun-like predicate, as in La Djan, tero prozymao = 'John is a third-rate author'. It is also capable of serving as an adverb when it modifies an adjective-like one: Le tero gudbi kruma je le hotle = 'The third-best room in the hotel'. We can even compress all three places of a NIro predicate into a predicate string by using it as an early modifier: Da bi le toro pligudbi ge hasfa go nu sifdui je mi = 'X is the second most suitable house I've found'. [The current LIP is still reading nero as NI, so it will not parse this sentence properly. A new LIP, with NIro lexed as PREDA, is on its way. -- JCB]

The second place of NIro is also likely to be frequently used, as it denotes not candidates -- who, in English at least, usually remain in the background -- but the property in which this qualitative ranking is being made. Here's an interesting example from Americana: La Djordj Uacintyn, pa nero lepo dorja, e lepo pismi, e lo karci je loUma samguidjo. 'George Washington was first in war, (first) in peace, and (first) in the hearts of his countrymen'. And with nero we can at last translate that sad old saying -- well-known among short-lived computer companies -- Lo neri kristni pa jmite lo nero simbu. = 'The first Christians got the best lions'.

Finally, like the other numerical-predicate suffixes, -ro can be applied to non-numeric quantifiers as well. Thus raro, rero, riro, roro, ruro, saro, siro, and suro are all well-defined (L1, 4.23 p.214). For example, ruro redro means 'sufficiently red' (in that candidate set), and, as we have already noted, raro must denote the final -- or "allth" -- element in some quality-series, and so must mean the lowest value of the quality in question to be found among these particular candidates. E.g., Le raro hapci stude je le ckela.= 'The least happy student at the school'.

In short, -ro offers the adventurous logli a very rich semantic domain to explore.

2. NI+cu, The Indefinite Set Descriptor

In his recent study of sets and multiples, JCB turned up an awkward gap in our designative apparatus. While Loglan 1, 4.23 p.216 provides for a kind of numerical description through the use of unmarked NIs before predicate expressions -- Ne mrenu 'A man/Exactly one man', Ri mrenu 'Some several men'. Toni mrenu 'Some twenty men'. -- these descriptions are all "indefinite" in that the speaker by using them indicates that s is not prepared to identify the individuals so designated. These "naked NI"-forms contrasted very handily with the "definite descriptions" made with Le -- Le ne mrenu 'The one man I mean', Le ri mrenu 'The several men I have in mind', Le toni mrenu 'The twenty men I have in mind' -- by using which, s indicates that s is willing to identify their designata.

But both NI-forms and Le NI-forms, when plural, apply to multiples. When we look for corresponding ways to designate sets, we find that we have only definite set description with Leu at our disposal; no indefinite way of describing sets existed. We could say Leu toni mrenu 'The set of twenty men I have in mind' but we could not say (briefly) 'A set consisting of some twenty men'. But suppose an L- speaker does want to say something like the E-speaker manages to suggest with 'A couple of', as in 'A couple of men moved the piano'. It's clear from the physics of this situation that s is talking about a set, not a multiple. (Multiples of men do not move pianos!) It's also clear from the offhand tone of 'A couple of ...' that s probably can't, or at least won't, divulge the identify of the two members of this piano-moving pair.

In Loglan we must be clear about such logical matters. But when JCB first noticed this gap -- whilst working with Alex Leith on A's "A First Visit to Loglandia" -- there was no indefinite set descriptor in the language ... no way to say 'A couple of' in that compact and yet conveniently offhand way.

The same structural point can be made by putting our 1995 descriptors in a 2x2 table. On 1 January 1995 only three of its four cells had entries:

	Multiples	Sets
Definite	Le to ...	Leu to ...
Indefinite	To ...	??? (Tocu)

After much discussion and several mind-changes -- for, though there was no indefinite set-descriptor, there are many circumlocutory ways of filling cell 2,2 -- the Keugru decided (a) that such "logical gaps" in the operator sets of Loglan must, when discovered, be filled, and (2) that, of the available suffixes, adding -cu to NI was the best way to fill this one.

If you will mentally replace those '???' in Cell 2,2 with Tocu, you will see that Tocu fits the pattern of its row and column neatly. It has the final /u/ of Leu (indicating set-hood), and the leading NI of NI itself (indicating indefiniteness).

Why not use the suffix -u, which would yield a perfect row-and-column symmetry? Because numerous NI+u forms already exist, starting with neu, a case tag. But granting that we do need an intervening consonant, why use /c/ and not some other? Because /c/ already suggests a kind of "single-letter hyphen", and /c/ was the only C of those available that did not suggest something else. Thus, /r l z/ were also available; but all these Cs had strong conflicting associations with something else. So we judged /c/ to be the best ... the nero in this set of candidates.

Logli will not, we predict, have very much trouble using the new NIcu descriptors. Correct usage depends on handling two distinctions: one between sets and multiples, the other between definiteness and indefiniteness. As a useful mnemonic, the E phrase 'A couple of ...', as applied to piano-movers, calls up both. There were a couple of them ... the neighbor noticed that; but she certainly doesn't know where to find them now. But something moved that piano, and that something was a set. So what we need here is the indefinite set-descriptor we have just invented, in short, the NI+cu word made with to. The case is strictly parallel to saying 'A cigar-smoker was in here' on smelling cigar-smoke in a room. The piano has been moved; it's no longer here. A neighbor tells us that "a couple of men" came by. The set-multiple distinction is not difficult to make; the definite-indefinite distinction is even easier. We make both all the time in English ... although often by irregular means, and so we're often unaware we're doing so. In L, we can now make both distinctions regularly. All cells are filled. So we can now say Tocu mrenu pa muvmao le pianfa.

Here's a few more examples from the four cells of our table, first, a couple of definite descriptions, one of a multiple and one of a set:

Le ri bukcu pa nu nursrimao la Jai Cai Braon.
The several books were/Each of the several books was written/authored by (its text made by) J C Brown

Leu bukcu ga skatio lio fe kilgramo.
The set of books weighs/The books together weigh/Collectively the books weigh (i.e., are scale-heavy at) five kilos.

Then a couple of indefinite ones, the first involving a multiple:

Nete bukcu ji vi levi buksrosia ga perti lo kuvla.
(Each of some) Thirteen books in this library (is)/are about caves.

and then two more involving sets:

Rocu mrenu pa hutri le prenyhaa.
(A mob/group composed of) Many men (I don't know who) destroyed the jail.

Lo miatci fa nu cmiza tecu muzkao.
The diners will be entertained by a trio of musicians (I don't know which trio yet).

Note that these last two forms contrast very sharply with definite set descriptions:

Leu ro mrenu hutri le prenyhaa.
The set/mob of men (I have in mind or have been describing) destroyed the jail.

Lo miatci fa nu cmiza leu te muzkao.
The diners will be entertained by the trio of musicians (whom I have in mind and can identify).

These are, to be sure, subtle distinctions ... usually not made explicitly by English-speakers. Indeed, in E we are often quite unaware that we are talking about four quite different sorts of logical objects when we use plural descriptive forms. But all four cells generated by these two binary distinctions -- the set-multiple one, and the definite-indefinite one -- must be explicitly labeled in our logical language if it is to encourage us -- perhaps even to teach us! -- to handle all descriptive categories deftly and well.

3. The Distinctness/Indistinctness of Sets of Non-Designating Variables:

A convenient Loglan invention is the use of non-designating variables (ba, be, bo, bu) to translate "There is/are"-phrases: Ba kangu vi le hasfa = 'Something x is(being) a dog in the house (There's a dog in the house)'.

The question came before the Keugru whether, hearing a sentence that deploys two such variables, the listener must assume that they refer to two distinct individuals. Probably lei should assume that. After all, the speaker has used two of these variables when s could have chosen to repeat the use of one. Why would s involve s-self in this extra effort unless s had two distinct (though indefinite) individuals in mind?

But that's not the question that logicians are inclined to raise. Their question is whether one must make this assumption. In other words, is it legitimate to transform any be in a string ... ba ... be ... into be noji ba ('y not identical to x')?

For plain speakers, this problem does not often arise ... mainly because the non-designating variables usually appear in different argument positions of a predicate, or in any case, could not refer to the same individual because of real-world considerations. But consider something like this:

Mi pa neible le skikru. I ba va ridle, ice be va smarue
I looked into (in-looked-at) the waiting-room (sit-room). (And) Someone x there reads (was reading), and someone y there smokes (was smoking).

The minimal claim of this pair of sentences is that there was at least one reader x in the waiting-room, and there was at least one smoker y there, too. The Keugru affirms that, consistent with symbolic-logic practice, the two non-designating variables ba and be need not refer to two distinct individuals...although of course they may do. Indeed they often do (else, we repeat, why would s use two variables when, in Loglan, s could as easily repeat the use of one?). But, speaking logically, we must admit that there can be just one individual i in that waiting-room, and, provided i is both reading and smoking, the fact that there is only one such person there will not falsify s's claim. That is, it is possible (though unlikely) that x = y; and logicians -- if not other people, soi crano -- must take this possibility into account.

To specify that the references of two non-designating variables are to be understood as distinct -- as in 'I saw something, and, a little later, heard something else' -- just use noji, a variant of JI that LIP does not yet recognize but is on its way: Mi pa vizka ba, epaza, pa hirti be noji ba = 'I saw something x, and (that was) shortly before (I) heard something y-not-x'. Then all doubt vanishes. You are indeed talking about "something else". And your logician friends will applaud you for being utterly clear about it.

-- Hue Krk Satlis, ze Djim Braon

Keugru Proposal 13/2, approved by la Keugru, August 2013

This is the first official ruling of the Loglan Academy as reconvened in July 2013.

Repeated vowels aa/ee/oo are forbidden to occur in borrowings. The rationale is that the primary stress of a predicate containing such a borrowing as a component must then lie on one of these two vowels, which would strongly restrict where the borrowing could occur in a complex. The only borrowing in which this occurred was alkooli, which is quite naturally revised to alkoholi as part of the proposal.

Keugru Proposal 13/1, approved by la Keugru, August 2013

This modifies the proposal in SLK 94/2. A CVC affix initial in a complex which makes a permissible initial consonant-pair with the following consonant must by y-hyphenated, except when the complex is of the shapes CVCCCV or CVCCVV (this is the change). Further, CCVV borrowings remain forbidden. The dictionary is in full compliance with this proposal already, which strongly suggests that this was the intent of the 94/2 ruling anyway; without this ruling, it would have been necessary to y-hyphenate hundreds of complexes of those two six-letter forms. Note that the slinkui test is still abolished (which is just as well as there are several slinkui words in the dictionary, all from before 1994).

Keugru Proposal 13/9, approved by la Keugru, August 2013

The form (name gap) is no longer an allowed form for a vocative: names used as vocatives must be marked with hoi. This averts many possible misreadings of name words: a vocative, being a freemod, can appear almost anywhere, so any unmarked occurrence of a name word (as for example, sutori components of serial names) was in danger of an unintended reading as a vocative.

Keugru Proposal 13/8, approved by la Keugru, June 2014

Predunits occurring as items in serial names must be marked with ci. There is once again just a single pause phoneme. This eliminates the potential confusion between la Djan Blanu (John the Blue) [now la Djan ci Blanu] and la Djan, blanu (John is blue), which was resolved earlier by providing for a shorter pause phoneme in serial names. It should be noted that the current provisional parser implements proposals for further related tweaks to the serial name construction.

Last updated Thursday, June 12, 2014