(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: these very short pauses that may occur within serial names, and 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. Grammar 76, incorporating these changes, and the encasing LIP are now available to LIP owners with the usual conditions.
Decisions are pending on several other proposals. However, the informal proposal by Bill Gober in this issue (see 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.
We have been studying the declension proposal during the last three months, and will have a decision to report next time. —RAM/JCB