Return-Path: Message-Id: Date: Fri, 24 May 91 02:26 EDT From: lojbab (Bob LeChevalier) To: lojban-list Subject: binxo Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Fri May 24 02:26:38 1991 X-From-Space-Address: lojbab commenting on cowan on jimc on the place strcuture It seems to me that a debate over whether, if "Harry becomes Sally" there is or is not an identity change, is a philosophical one tied at least partly to your idea of identity. If a building becomes rubble, it changes identity - you would not call the rubble "the Empire State Building". For the phrase "and unto dust you shall return", which might be translated using binxo, whether 'you' retain an identity at all is a religious question, and Lojban does not want to presume the existence or non-existence of the soul - in any event that dust might become someone else next year. Normally, since the x2 place of binxo is a description (not an abstract bridi) you are saying that x1 becomes something that x2 is a description of (i.e that the x1 properly fills in the x1 of the x2 selbri. This is a lingistic operation and not a philosophical one. Use more elaborate tanru or lujvo to make distinction about the natureof becoming if it is important. The use of "become" in most languages to join two "nouns" is the basis of our place structure. Hidden 'logical' structure in the semantics of words is something we try to avoid analyzing yet - it might be easier to do so in Lojban than in English. But it is all we can do just to get place strcutrues analyzed to be consistent with similar meaning words. When I added binxo as a gismu, it was to separate it from cenba and galfi which are clearly distinct in most everyone's mind, except Jim Brown's, since he uses them interchangeably in Institute Loglan tanru with 2 gismu roots - 1 of those roots resembles "cenba" (i think "*cenja") and the other is "*madzo" which is a malglico misuse of that word, since its place structure is x1 makes state/object x2 out of x3 overlaps between our "galfi" and our "zbasu". Thus Lojban has a triplet of words for change whose meanings are distinguished primarily from each other as noted: galfi: x1 modifies x2 into x3 by x4 induced change of another cenba: x1 varies in property x2 by amount x3 variation with time with indication of process, but not of agent or final state binxo: x1 becomes x2 variation tha suggests a final state different than the start, but no implication of agent se te galfi (selterga'i) would be galfi with places in order x2, x3, x1, x4 giving x1 becomes x2 instigated by x3 doing/being x4 which is binxo with a clear agent -lojbab