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Message-ID: <51B46762.8080509@lojban.org>
Date: Sun, 09 Jun 2013 07:30:42 -0400
From: "Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG" <lojbab@lojban.org>
Organization: The Logical Language Group, Inc.
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To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [lojban] cmevla as a class of brivla
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selpa'i wrote:
> la .lojbab. cu cusku di'e
>> selpa'i wrote:
>>> la .lojbab. cu cusku di'e
>>>> What semantic distinctions arise from identifying
>>>> something as a name as opposed to a normal description, I am not sure
>>>> (but it would surely encompass the relevant place structures).
>>>
>>> But {la} doesn't describe. It names. I don't describe Jacob Errington as
>>> a sky when I call him by la tsani, and neither does he describe himself
>>> as a sky by giving himself that name. It's merely a label used to refer
>>> to this individual, nothing more.
>>
>> But "tsani" itself is grammatically a brivla, and implicit
>> (grammatically) in "la tsani" is "la tsani be ...".  The places are
>> inseparable from the brivla.  That is fundamental to the language.
>
> I agree that places are inseperable from a brivla in that the places are
> what the brivla means.

I wasn't talking about meaning, actually.  I was talking about grammar. 
  A brivla automatically invokes grammatically the attachment of places 
(except when quoted with zo, or used as a delimiter in a zoi quote).

Those exceptions are in fact significant - they are examples of the 
brivla (or whatever word) being taken as a string of symbols/sounds that 
exists on it own regardless of which word or kind of word that it is. 
It would seem that you want names to be another example of a string of 
symbols taken as such a standalone language unit.

But that isn't the case for Lojban.

  All the places together determine the meaning,
> and usually, if one or more places aren't present, the meaning of the
> brivla is different. When I use {tsani}, I must be aware that it relates
> a sky to the place it's a sky of. *That* is fundamental to the language.
>
> However, you seem to be saying that {la tsani} and {la tsani be zo'e} or
> {la tsani be da} are all people that share the exact same name.

I am not saying anything of the sort.  It might or might not be true, 
just as names might refer to the same person while having nothing to do 
with each other ("Robert LeChevalier", "lojbab", "Papa", "asshole" are 
all names that have been used to refer to the same person).  But there 
also might be multiple referents for the name "la tsani" as well, just 
as there are multiple persons named "Robert LeChevalier" in the world 
(not many, but they exist).

I am saying that as far as Lojban is concerned "{la tsani} and {la tsani 
be zo'e}" are linguistically equivalent, and there is no way to say "la 
tsani" such that it DOESN'T include a possible value in the unspecified 
places; they are there and they are "zo'e", if nothing else.

> And this is where I disagree.

If I decided to call you "George" you would still be the same person. 
Likewise if I were to call you "la tsani be zo'e".  Furthermore, your 
preference has little to do with it.  It was defined to be POLITE to 
privilege the name preferred by the one being named (or by the 
culture/language of which the named is most closely associated).  But 
that isn't part if the language definition, but rather a cultural 
convention.

And dotside or no dotside, I will never accept someone's choice of name 
to be "la" %^)

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

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