From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Fri Aug 19 07:39:50 2005 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Fri, 19 Aug 2005 07:50:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.52) id 1E682A-0000Y3-PL for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Fri, 19 Aug 2005 07:39:50 -0700 Received: from wproxy.gmail.com ([64.233.184.207]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.52) id 1E6825-0000Xr-J3 for lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org; Fri, 19 Aug 2005 07:39:50 -0700 Received: by wproxy.gmail.com with SMTP id i30so559488wra for ; Fri, 19 Aug 2005 07:39:44 -0700 (PDT) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=EV73++PWJbsAOM2gD4z9T5oYPpqjuRb0kmlOmysMBh9ZPzl/bz4E/jYW2NLuyuQ3xY4JSnpOevTB/S4qt8MHEu+VDTh5maBO7RHR/L1H0E58ZuTzyppj+mhkoYrlvbKvt0962L2nlgWCoSAA3yuFSIQqfjy75dAcw0q9tgcsOoM= Received: by 10.54.122.9 with SMTP id u9mr1901741wrc; Fri, 19 Aug 2005 07:39:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.54.140.6 with HTTP; Fri, 19 Aug 2005 07:39:43 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2005 10:39:43 -0400 From: Matt Arnold To: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: zgana, viska, catlu In-Reply-To: <2d3df92a0508190134363dd206@mail.gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by Ecartis Content-Disposition: inline References: <2d3df92a0508190134363dd206@mail.gmail.com> X-Spam-Score: -2.5 (--) X-archive-position: 1784 X-Approved-By: jkominek@miranda.org X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@chain.digitalkingdom.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-original-sender: matt.mattarn@gmail.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-list: lojban-beginners coi .xiliodr. We can't have this perfectly. While creating the Lojban project it was discovered that this was impossible. You could break up {ninmu} "woman" into pieces: {fetsi remna} "female human." But then you can break up human into pieces as well. And you can break up female into pieces. You can break up viska, and sudden, and intentional, into multiple words. But this would never stop because you could break up those words too. So what the language designers did was blanket semantic space with overlapping blankets. Each word overlaps other words so that every meaning is covered thoroughly. Even if you design a new vocabulary and avoid having overlap, it would just be one person's opinion on where the borders of one meaning ends and another meaning begins. No one would agree. Multiple words with subtle differences are actually good. They provide multiple solutions to speech problems. A system that lacks redundancy is brittle, not flexible. By the way. You could say "sudden see" {suksa viska} but it wouldn't mean {zgana}. It would be more restricted in meaning, in two ways: 1. {zgana} is not about sudden-ness. 2. {zgana} is not just about visual seeing. The X3 place of {zgana} is what senses or means are used for observation, which might not be sight. Thanks for your great questions. -epkat zgana x1 observes/notices/watches/beholds x2 using senses/means x3 under conditions x4 catlu x1 looks at/examines/views/inspects/regards/watches/gazes at x2 viska x1 sees/views/perceives visually x2 under conditions x3 ganse x1 [observer] senses/detects/notices stimulus property x2 (ka) by means x3 under conditions x4 jvinu x1 is the view/scene/panorama/sight/prospect of x2 (object/location) from point-of-view x3 On 8/19/05, HeliodoR wrote: > Couldn't we use only one of the above root-words (since they have quite the > same origin: visual observing) together with some cmavo? > Like this: > zgana - 'sudden viska' > catlu - 'intentional viska' > viska - 'see' > So catlu & zgana crossed out and everything still may be expressed; and this > isn't the only case where a whole kit of root-words describing nearly the > same meaning exists. > Having an extra gismu for versions of a word seems pointless to me. > > heliodor