From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Wed Aug 18 18:14:22 1993 Received: from ELI.CS.YALE.EDU by NEBULA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Wed, 18 Aug 1993 22:15:53 -0400 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by eli.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Wed, 18 Aug 1993 22:15:48 -0400 Message-Id: <199308190215.AA03743@eli.CS.YALE.EDU> Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 1875; Wed, 18 Aug 93 22:14:32 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 9707; Wed, 18 Aug 93 22:16:56 EDT Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1993 22:14:22 EDT Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: smoking X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch Status: RO X-Status: First a request. yesterday's mail had many comments on the semantics of individual gismu. Luckily I noted this in passing, and went over the mail immediately. Otherwise I am running currently 50 days behind on reading my mail carefully, and do not expect to come close to catching up before the dictionary is done. With all the good semantics discussion, I'd hate to see something useful get left out of the gismu list because I didn't read it in time. Therefore, if your discussion reveals confusion about the meaning of some gismu or cmavo because the current text doesn't seem clear, or even more important, there seems to be a problem/inappropriateness in the place structure, please send me a private message with subject including "BOOK:" or "GISMU:" or "DICTIONARY:" and I can promise special attention will be given it. If a whole discussion seems to be hinging on detailed word meanings, you can put this in the header of a general Lojban List message as well. Colin discussing And's attempt at tobacco smoking: >I'm sorry, but despite the current English 'use' (which seems to >subcategorise for _illegal_ drug), I cannot see that the tanko is a >tool, apparatus, machine etc. It would be strange in English or Lojban >to 'use' food or drink, except in the special case where the purpose is >in focus: 'I use food as a boredom reliever'. > >You are right as to your first and third criticisms of my suggestions, >but I maintain that in the normal case the 'purpose' is not relevant. I've generally agreed with the things Colin posted yesterday on gismu meanings, and several have led to explanatory changes in the gismu list. (I will note in passing that most uses of the previous x1 of klani, now x2 are covered equally well in places of merli, kancu, or namcu and are probably less forced.) In this case, I think that pilno IS appropriate if there exists a purpose, even if it is not intended to be stressed. I think the only time a particular place is stressed is when there are two gismu (or perhaps common lujvo) that differ primarily in whether a place is present or not, as for example klama and litru and cliva, and perhaps gasnu and zukte. There is no general "uses" brivla that has no purpose place, so the purpose is no more stressed than the 'route' x4 in "mi klama le zarci"; it exists but may be ellipsized as obvious to the speaker. I see pilno and zukte to be similar in that they have a purpose x3, but that lack of contrast is fairly important too. I never intended that the list of x2 possibilities for pilno should be comprehensive or exclusionary (for example of 'material/substance' in x2 of pilno); often times these lists are provided as synonyms for English-language lookup, especially in current lists where the information is bracketed rather than parenthesized. I specifically did not want it limited to "tools" (tutci) since we semantically divided up tool/instrument-space 4 ways at the first DC LogFest back in '86 (even before the split) into tutci, cabra, minji, and zukte. I don't see that "using" a drug is without a purpose, and "boredom relieving" and "hunger satisfying" seem like very good 'purposes', especially if you are aware of them. In my 12 months of classes associated with a diet program, there is considerable concentration on 'why you eat', and being aware of why when you do so, so as to avoid eating merely out of unconscious habit. This suggests that the underlying question is whether there can be a goal/purpose for something if the person doing so is not consciously undertaking said goal or purpose. I could live with that argument against tobacco-use or chemical-use, but perhaps this can be accounted for with "tcaci" - tobacco-habit-use or chemical-habit-use. (Use tenses to distinguish between an individual instance of this, and the multiple occasions that a habit suggests. If there truly is no identifiable purpose, or if you don't like to suggest that there is, I suggest "lifri": tobacco-burn-experience, or "gasnu": tobacco-burn-agent. For generalized smoking, you could use smoke-breathe (which it turns out is what JCB put in L4, not that this is a recommendation %^); smoke-do for JCB is to preserve meat by smoking it), with the substance being smoked as a modifier or as a place, as you prefer, but I've heard that one difference between the various types of smoking is whether you inhale or not, so you may have to search farther: smoke-experience smoke-selzdile. It may be that we want to broaden zdile to be "occupies", with only context to indicate that it is pleasant (or zan- or pluky-), if that would help on tricky questions of whether some actually enjoys an experience; I may have presumed this anyway: I think the sense of pleasantly I intended for zdile was meant to exclude torture/imprisonment and other distinctly unpleasant things. BTW And, I think you wanted "marna", as in marijuana, for "hemp". lojbab