Return-Path: Message-Id: <9112172330.AA13601@relay1.UU.NET> Date: Tue Dec 17 18:54:59 1991 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: feminism X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan , Eric Raymond , Eric Tiedemann Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Tue Dec 17 18:54:59 1991 X-From-Space-Address: cbmvax!uunet!CUVMA.BITNET!LOJBAN Nick has in effect challenged me: to define a lujvo with place structure for feminism. I respond, noting that there are probably as many definitions of feminism as there are feminists. But to avoid begging the question, I'll try anyway. I write this and the next paragraph after those which follow. Here are two Lojbanisms for 'feminism' that result from the following analysis. loi nimjizdunkri loi nimnaujizdunkri Without reading further, using only the gismu lists, what place structures would you guess the lujvo have, given only the knowledge that we are trying to represent an agreed upon concept that has the implied usage contexts that would normally be found in a discussion of feminism. The two do not necessarily have the same structures. I am presuming, as in all lujvo-making, that we are dealing as cooperative speaker and listener; i.e. the goal is NOT to come up with the most outlandish place structure possible, but the one that a user of either of those terms would use in the context of a discussion of feminism. If you would criticize Lojban lujvo, you should try this, not giving up because it seems too hard or too ambiguous. It isn't, because I did it below. I contend that if you decide that you MUST get a single place structure out of either of those Lojban words then you will come very close to what I ended up with. Then, bearing in mind that these words, actually used in sentences that require those place structures, will have plausible values filled into many or all of the defined places. When you see the resulting place structure and make up even the most trivial sentence using all the places, you will hopefully agree with me that a reader of such a sentence would easily be able to understand the lujvo and its place structure. Now, having jumped to the conclusion, here is the analysis I went through to get there: Note that I am defining feminism as the mass of feminists. An alternative formula often used by JCB is that an '-ism' is a belief system (krici ciste), but I think that adds little to the concept as it is actually used. That would be more like a feminist political platform, in my mind. Without argument in support, I will coin a tanru for one meaning of feminist: ninmu ke jinzi dunli ke'e krici woman type-of innately equal, believer or using bo for the same grouping: ninmu jinzi bo dunli krici woman innately-equal believer As a tanru, this of course has the place structure of "krici", because you can fill in places of the other components using be/bei. This is not possible in lujvo, so the places, or at least important ones for a lujvo, must be part of the place structure. I am analyzing the place structure as I go. I did not consciously think out the place structure for the resulting lujvo of this tanru, nor indeed have I yet actually constructed the lujvo word itself as I write this. We will see how well instinctive lujvo-making works as compared with, say, dikyjvo lujvo-making, which Nick seems to say is incapable of dealing with the likes of "feminism" anyway. Next I will extract gismu list information for the components: ninmu x1 is a woman rafsi: nim ni'u (I chose ninmu over fetsi, because the question of children's rights is generally considered separate, and fetsi has an "of species x2" that raises questions of 'speciesism'. So I keep it simple. jinzi x1 is an innate/intrinsic/inherent property of x2 rafsi jiz (I leave out questions of English 'rights' here as well. My understanding of the concept seems to suggest that 'rights' are merely a kind of jinzi themselves. Thus 'equal rights' can be expressed as jinzi-dunli (innately-equal) or dunli-jinzi (equal-inherent_trait). I chose the former for this - more malglico and hence probably more suited for this concept which is probably substantially English/American in its cultural basis.) dunli x1 is equal to x2 in dimension/property x3 rafsi: dun du'i (Hmm. Maybe we want innately-equal_in_inherent_trait. jinzi ke jinzi dunli jinzi ke jinzi ke jinzi dunli ... %^) Added terms may be more exact but they really add little to the concepts involved; indeed one measure of whether you have gone far enough in incorporating components in your lujvo is whether you get all the places you feel are important from the source components. Repeated terms therefore make sense only if they will bring in multiple occurrences of places which actually have semantic differences in their values which are important to the final concept. I don't think this is true of repeated jinzi components, even though the semantics of the two (or more) "jinzi"s in relation to the rest of the metaphor are clearly different.) krici x1 believes creed x2 about x3 rafsi: kri ke has rafsi kem, and ke'e is its own rafsi; bo has rafsi bor Now let us look at the goal: I want a place structure something like x1 believes women are innately equal to x2 in properties/rights x3 having identified the potential complexities of species and age as I went along, x2 is important - what does a feminist believe women are equal to? If you merely want 'men' you could probably eliminate the x2 place using the tanru: ninmu jo'u nanmu jinzi bo dunli krici women in common with men innately-equal believer I believe this would eliminate the x2 place above Thus the lujvo for the hypothetical 3-placer could be nimkemjizdunke'ekri or nimjizbordunkri and the two-placer nimjo'unaujizbordunkri I might argue that the ke/ke'e/bo/jo'u terms can probably be deleted from the lujvo - they add little to the lujvo because leaving them out, while it perverts the implied tanru grouping, the tanru formed by leaving them out have no obvious usefulness in discourse. I thus favor: nimjizdunkri nimnaujizdunkri which is what I am now putting up at the top of this essay. I will now build up the place structure piece by piece, remembering the grouping as I go, even though I am eliminating it in the final lujvo. jinzi bo dunli x1 is innately equal to x2 in property x3 To analyze: ninmu jinzi bo dunli I put 'women' into x1: Women are innately-equal to x1 in property x2 The variant version with men and women is: Women in common with men are innately-equal in property x1 Either is then combined with krici: x1 believes (Women are innately-equal to x2 in property x3) about ... x1 believes (Women in common with men are innately-equal in property x2) about ... The 'about' place is superfluous. Almost anything could go into it in a lujvo of this complexity. Indeed the x2 and x3 of both krici and djuno are likely to rarely be both filled in since they are highly interrelated. So I leave it out of the final lujvo, which is more about the belief than about the believer. This type of superfluous place deletion is as far as I know, not allowed for in jimc's dikyjvo theory, but is essential to trimming place structures of long lujvo. The results: x1 believes women are innately-equal to x2 in property x3 x1 believes women in common with men are innately-equal in property x2 which is exactly the goal I set out when I started. My analysis definitely supported my conclusion. Did yours? I will be happy to see someone's posted alternate analysis. lojbab