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Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2012 15:07:53 -0400
From: "Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG" <lojbab@lojban.org>
Organization: The Logical Language Group, Inc.
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Subject: Re: [lojban] {.au}/{djica}={.ai}/{?}. No gismu for intention
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Gleki Arxokuna wrote:
> If the difference between {.ai} and {.au} is so important then why there
> is no gismu for "intention"?

The intended gismu corresponding to intention was "platu", or perhaps 
some compound thereof.  I'll accept the possible use of zukte proposed 
by someone else, though I think intention need not be purposive either.

> {zukte} = "to intend"? the definition says nothing about that. It should be clarified, that is changed.

The gismu list is baselined. We haven't allowed changes merely for 
clarity for nearly 20 years.

But in point of fact, there is some indication in the list associating 
zukte with intention - see the note on the definition of lifri for example.

> Just {zukte djica}?

Intention is entirely orthogonal to desire, IMNSHO

Another possibility for intention would be nalsnuti, but I'm not sure 
that would cover the full range of the attitudinal of intention.

Just a metaphorical tanru?

It isn't, but if it were, so what?  When we started the project, there 
was certainly no stigma attached to metaphorical interpretations. 
Indeed, some of the gismu are explicitly defined with metaphorical use 
in mind (e.g. the mention of protrusion for nazbi).  Such use of 
metaphor has sometimes been deprecated by the community, but we thought 
it far preferable to a significantly larger gismu list or more extensive 
borrowing of words from other languages.

> Or a lujvo again derived from {djica}?

We would of course have used a lujvo made from the metaphoric tanru, if 
the concept had been based on such a metaphor.

> And why such a huge bias in favor of cmavo and not predicates in a
> *predicate language*?

What bias?  There are over 1300 gismu, and far fewer cmavo.

If you refer to the attitudinals and other members of UI and the lack of 
explicit ties to gismu, please remember that the attitudinal system was 
redesigned and greatly expanded *after* the rest of the language was 
essentially complete, in 1989-1990.  JCB's original set of attitudinals 
allowed for only a dozen or two possible expressions.  I had expanded 
this to around three dozen with intensity markers, but people kept 
finding holes.

My priority thus was in defining an attitudinal system that worked, and 
that could cover the entire range of emotions expressed in any and all 
human languages, as well as (insofar as possible) nonverbal expressions 
of emotion/attitude as well, and then to go beyond that to ones that 
someone might WANT to express if the language allowed it.

Once it was done, we had little clue how to define some of the concepts 
and distinctions clearly in any language, much less Lojban (and not 
within the confines of the fixed length LogFlash definition field which 
was the then-standard limitation on definitions).  (The difficulty in 
defining cmavo is why there was no dictionary published in the early 
1990s, and why CLL was written as a necessary prerequisite to any 
dictionary effort - until we clearly defined the selma'o, the word 
definitions were too difficult a problem.)

By the time the attitudinal revision was complete and accepted, the 
gismu list was complete, and preliminarily baselined; we required votes 
at LogFest for any additions, and there was strong resistance to adding 
to the set of gismu (and indeed some gismu were deleted in such votes; I 
still remain fond of gumri = mushroom).  But this wasn't seen as a bias 
against "predicates", but rather as a strong bias in favor of 
compounding over adding primitive roots in growing the lexicon.  The 
attitudinal system itself reflected that bias, in that a huge number of 
attitudes were designed to be expressed by compound cmavo (indicating 
intensity as well as opposition and the thoroughly original/untested 
social/mental/emotional/physical/sexual (and later-added spiritual) 
modifiers.

There wasn't any real after-the-fact attempt to match attitudinals and 
gismu beyond a vague attempt to be sure that all of the attitudinals 
could be somehow expressed as compounds or whatever.  And indeed, doing 
so might have been problematic, because the oppositions expressed in the 
attitudinal system (using nai) wouldn't necessarily represented by 
nal+gismu (e.g. a'enai e'inai), and we couldn't have made the 
attitudinal system as comprehensive using as few cmavo, if we had been 
so constrained.


lojbab
-- 
Bob LeChevalier    lojbab@lojban.org    www.lojban.org
President and Founder, The Logical Language Group, Inc.

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