Re: [lojban] baby words, sort of: catlu vs. zgana

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

In English we have:

look - see
listen - hear
touch - feel
sniff - smell
taste - taste

where the second word in each pair describes an experience while the
first one describes an action one takes in order to have that
experience. ("taste" can work both ways, action "I tasted the soup to
see whether it needed more salt", or experience "I tasted something
funny in the soup". "smell" and "feel" too can work both ways.)

Lojban doesn't have gismu for most of those:

catlu - viska
----- - tirna
pencu - -----
----- - sumne
----- - -----

My understanding is that "zgana" and "ganse" were meant to be the
general words for each column, so we could have:

catlu - viska
kerzga - tirna
pencu - pilga'e
zbizga - sumne
tacyzga - tacyga'e

Or in fully regular form:

kalzga - kalga'e
kerzga - kerga'e
pilzga - pilga'e
zbizga - zbiga'e
tacyzga - tacyga'e

There are however two problems with all of this.

One problem is that all the words used to define "zgana" in English in
the gi'uste are used almost exclusively with sight, and as Pierre
pointed out they seem to mean something more like a prolonged
intentional viska than just directing some sense in order to perceive.
I believe this is just a case of bad gloss words, since English has no
convenient word for the intended concept. It is clear that despite the
gloss words, "zgana" is not restricted to sight, because it has a
place for the means of sensing.

The other problem is the property in x2 of ganse. I think gismu that
have a property argument and no argument for the thing with the
property are just wrong. Fortunately there are not many of them. My
policy is to just ignore the gi'uste about this.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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