From suomichris@gmail.com Thu Dec 17 18:11:10 2009 Received: from mail-yx0-f202.google.com ([209.85.210.202]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1NLSJ8-0007Te-OO for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:11:10 -0800 Received: by yxe40 with SMTP id 40so2684630yxe.28 for ; Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:11:00 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:received:from:date:message-id :subject:to:content-type; bh=8vnhU20okvNb9EM0IpCNZye0jdhAU9rfBIxpULloIQg=; b=B+zr+1nHJgJMhXzebYjel95uaZeJzoiU+tClAOeR/IifksPgj9+gjLx68R+Bt5vwoy Wu1mf3MumXnr5hicBF2zfRh5k59oGlPqTukdAeNlJ3W4eo9VxTrjHn2ddXW9+qlehX1Q ZLDuIiXhyzPq7GILyOJT1zT6pSVuuejCrLUpU= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:from:date:message-id:subject:to:content-type; b=CUmev4LLkq/ATQrRfGBe42J0DhU4Vm0z7fBGjIfiHThQtaftQuGxqa4LyN9ohgIR5f UvoAlSetpwKr9SA2Tp8pZCNZdjx20HCsJvApt7U+Al1JZ+5vtcw1WvNHrnQM0wO/dRru ztqKQp6MJK015PiswmpbdZOXKPcm765kJiWHs= MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.100.56.12 with SMTP id e12mr5206838ana.106.1261102260092; Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:11:00 -0800 (PST) From: Christopher Doty Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:10:40 -0800 Message-ID: Subject: A question about gismu definitions To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Hi all, I'm new to Lojban, but think it's very cool. I'm a PhD student in linguistics, and it's quite fun to think about how different (and similar) Lojban is from natural languages. As I'm starting to learn gismu, though, I have a couple of question about definitions. Consider the set of gismu below, along with their definitions: remna - x1 is a human/human being/man (non-specific gender-free sense); (adjective:) x1 is human prenu - x1 is a person/people (noun) [not necessarily human]; x1 displays personality/a persona remsmi - r1 is humanoid/man-like in quality r2 remsmismani - x1 is an ape of species x2. ninmu - x1 is a woman/women; x1 is a female humanoid person [not necessarily adult] nanmu - x1 is a man/men; x1 is a male humanoid person [not necessarily adult] My first question is, essentially, this: what are criteria for using these various forms? Is remsmi not to be used with human beings, but only non-human things which have some resemblance to human beings? (And what is "man" doing in there? Is that the "non-gender specific" man as in remna?) When can you use prenu with non-humans? When they're sentient aliens or computers? Can you use this for apes as well, even though a separate set of terms exists for apes? I suppose that my issue with this is that I'm not clear how we're defining 'person/people' and 'humanoid' here. Does personhood imply sentience? Or only that something is alive? Or is something like ninmu only used with things which are demonstrably both physically and mentally similar to human beings? Perhaps I'm overthinking this a bit in an effort to be truly "logical." It seems like including these bits in the definition are intended to cover things like characters/computer game avatars/etc., as well as possibly future non-human intelligences, but it seems a bit messy at the moment (perhaps because all such non-human entities are currently fictional/hypothetical). Relatedly, I'm wondering about the definitions of some gismu, like dunda below, that list multiple English words in the definition. dunda - x1 [donor] gives/donates gift/present x2 to recipient/beneficiary x3 [without payment/exchange]. Am I correct in assuming that this is an effort to provide a sense of the concepts that the gismu covers, and not simply a list of English equivalents? That is, can we use dunda in ANY place where a transfer of an object takes place without recompense (e.g., bequeath, transmit (as knowledge across generations), will, etc.), or ONLY in cases where English specifically uses "donate" or "give?" Thanks in advance! I'm sure y'all'll be got lots more of these esoteric types of questions from me in the future :p Chris