From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Thu Aug 19 07:20:03 1993 Received: from ELI.CS.YALE.EDU by NEBULA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Thu, 19 Aug 1993 15:05:50 -0400 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by eli.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Thu, 19 Aug 1993 12:32:38 -0400 Message-Id: <199308191632.AA00216@eli.CS.YALE.EDU> Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 4334; Thu, 19 Aug 93 12:30:45 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 4038; Thu, 19 Aug 93 12:33:05 EDT Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1993 11:20:03 -0400 Reply-To: John Cowan Sender: Lojban list From: John Cowan Subject: Re: TECH: bramau booboo X-To: Lojban List To: Erik Rauch In-Reply-To: <9308190344.AA09205@relay1.UU.NET> from "Nick Nicholas" at Aug 19, 93 01:42:26 pm Status: O X-Status: la nitcion. cusku di'e > But the standard of bigness is irrelevant, isn't it. An elephant is big compared > to humans, and small compared to planets, but this has nothing to to with > the fact that it is bigger than a rhino, which it is whether you think of > planets or mice as a norm. Yes, and this is why JCB banned "big" from his version of the language in favor of "bigger" as a gismu (the keyword for "groda" is still "big", but the place structure is "X is bigger than Y by Z", presumably "by amount Z".) We, the Lojbanists, rejected that reasoning, subsituting "x1 is big ... by standard x3" to provide a reference point. But when we move from "the vague positive" to "the precise comparative" (Quine, >Quiddities<, s.v. "Knowledge"), we can drop the standard place. -- John Cowan cowan@snark.thyrsus.com ...!uunet!lock60!snark!cowan e'osai ko sarji la lojban.