Return-Path: Message-Id: <9112091953.AA26895@relay1.UU.NET> Date: Mon Dec 9 15:44:30 1991 Reply-To: John Cowan Sender: Lojban list From: John Cowan Subject: Re: The thing who's name literly means ... X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan , Eric Raymond , Eric Tiedemann In-Reply-To: <9112081036.AA04167@relay1.UU.NET>; from "Major" at Dec 8, 91 9:34 pm Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Mon Dec 9 15:44:30 1991 X-From-Space-Address: cbmvax!uunet!CUVMA.BITNET!LOJBAN la meijr. cusku di'e > Is there a short form for the expression "The thing who's name > litterly means ...". I suspect that is something I would use quite > regularly. For example, to me > > sticisralo > > refers to the culture/nationality etc of western part of the > Australian continent not of the political entity called (in English) > Western Australia. I could say > > la wastrn.astralis > > or something similar, but that would in no way help a non-speaker of > English. "la" can precede a predicate as well as a (morphological) name. So la stici sralo would be: that-which-is-named-the western-type-of Australian-thing Such a name may be quite arbitrary: Western Australia is, in fact, in the western part of Australia, but notoriously la censa ke latmo jecta that-which-is-named-the holy-type-of (Roman-type-of polity) refers to something that was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire. Another example might be: la ci cribe which means that-which-is-called "Three Bears" and need not consist of bears, nor be numbered three. It might, for example, be the name of a restaurant. This is distinct from le ci cribe which is some group of three things I call bears, and also from ci cribe which refers to three things that really are bears. The first lujvo I ever invented was of this form: la kirmoi (Translation left as an exercise.) --- General query to sralo lobypli: the draft textbook lessons use la .austrail,ias. as the name of your country. How do you feel about this form? Is it too Strine for international consumption? -- cowan@snark.thyrsus.com ...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan e'osai ko sarji la lojban