Message-Id: <199402082213.AA09101@eli.CS.YALE.EDU>
Date:         Tue, 8 Feb 1994 17:10:36 -0500
Reply-To: Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU>
From: Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Subject:      Re: cukta
To: Erik Rauch <rauch>
In-Reply-To:  <199402081143.AA05430@access1.digex.net> from "Logical Language               Group" at Feb 8, 94 06:43:22 am
Status: RO

Well, I had thought that the "cukta" decision was closed, and I had lost, and
that's that.  However, it seems to be implicitly opened again, so I will
put in my {re fepni}.

> The essence in this case is just what a cukta should be.  We don't want it
> identical to the English word, which is polysemous in the ways I have noted.

Agreed.

> The discussions at LogFest said that we want to be able to have a meaningful
> word even in a fututre where books are not commonly bound documents.

Agreed, with the proviso that print-on-paper will have a long, long life,
and should be the default case ({be zu'i bei zu'i ...}).

> If the consensus is that the current definition is unsatisfactory, I am
> willing to change it, but along lines like the following:
>
> a cukta is a realtionship between some unitary container of a 'work' and the
> 'work' itself.  Places for author/subject etc would thereby have to be
> expressed by complicated expressions in x2.  The medium of recording would be
> x3.

This sounds very good to me.  The work itself would be {lo cfika} or {lo draci}
or {lo lisri} or {lo pemci} or what have you.

> The negative (or positive, depending on how you look at it) is that I cannot
> see how such a definition excludes a television movie videocassette (a book
> of tv images?) and a whole bunch of other things.

You could simply rule it out in the definition:

        x1 is a book/container for textual work x2 in recording medium x3.

The word "textual" pins down {lo cukta} in the same way that the word
"canine" pins down {lo gerku}, which as far as the bare bones of the place
structure is concerned, could include whales -- but whales aren't "canine".
Similarly, the "work" of a videocassette isn't "textual".

Alternatively, you could simply allow as to how videocassettes >are<
{lo cukta be fi na'e zu'i}, books with non-typical medium.

> But it does give a physical object in x1.

Yes, and I think this is the de facto understanding which people have of
{lo cukta} and which should be preserved.  As Art Protin says, we need
to start distinguishing between the object and the work, and I think there
are plenty of words for different kinds of works, or {lo selfinti} if you
want to be generic.

OTOH, having an explicit x2 place for "cukta" eliminates the blank-book
difficulty: those are still just {lo selpapri}, and can also be characterized
as {lo cukta be zi'o bei zu'i}.

> This would give something like
> le re selpapri cu cukta le cfika po'u la jamna joi panpi le selprina

This strikes me as the Right Thing.

PLACE STRUCTURE QUESTION:  Why does {cfika} lack x4, the audience, which is
found in {pemci} and {draci} and {lisri} and {prosa}?

It seems to me that a work of fiction entails an audience, at least a
hypothetical one, just as much as a poem.  Of course, something can be
{lo pemci je cfika}, like the >Iliad<, which is a fiction in verse form.

--
John Cowan              sharing account <lojbab@access.digex.net> for now
                e'osai ko sarji la lojban.