Date: Sun, 31 Jul 1994 01:09:29 -0400
From: Logical Language Group <lojbab>
Message-Id: <199407310509.AA21582@access3.digex.net>
To: ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk
Subject: Re: current cmene project
Cc: lojbab@access.digex.net, lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu
Status: RO
X-From-Space-Date: Sun Jul 31 01:15:38 1994
X-From-Space-Address: lojbab

UC> Bob Slaughter:
UC> > Naming is speaker-referent, not absolute.  I'm sure the Native Americans 
UC> > name for the swamp we later called Washington, D.C., and in some point in
UC> > future, it may be called the Place-that-Was or some such by the
UC> > pos-nuclear-holocaust inhabitants of the area. (see the short story "By t
UC> > Waters of Babylon") Even now, some Americans have names for the place tha
UC> > not really suitable for a public forum.
UC> 
UC> I quite agree, I can use any cmene I like to refer to Washington D.C.
UC> My point is that if someone is going to the trouble of thinking up a
UC> cmevla (cmene zei valsi) for Wash.D.C. then they might as well come
UC> up with a fuhivla (which is not a name, & whose meaning is absolute),
UC> since fuhivla are part of the language (or rather, I should say, part of
UC> the lexicon/grammar).

So are cmevla.  And what they "mean" or "refer to" have the same conditions

1) if they are nonce cmevla/fu'ivla, then they mean what the speaker intends
them to mean  (or at least what he expects the listener to understand - I
disagree with your assertion that my use of a name means that the name is
necessarily what *I* choose to call it instead of what someone else might
choose), with as many referents as the speaker might intend them to refer
to.  This is true for fu'ivla or cmevla.

2) If they appear in the dictionary, they acquire the prescriptive force
that dictionaries tend to acquire by the way people use them.  In this case
they tend to have the meaning attributed to them in the dictionary - again
this may be singular in reference only if the dictionary implies that it is,
which the Lojban dictionary I am putting together will not do at least in
this edition, since these names truly are nonce creations and rarely will
have appeared in a significant enough amount of Lojban text to be considered
consensus names.  (In addition, I would say that assigning a fu'ivla would
be considered somewhat more permanent and inflexible, and this is
undesirable when there is still considerable controversy over phonological
mappings into Lojban.)

Furthermore, my purpose for listing a lot of names in the dictionary is
not only to provide names that people will probably want to use a lot,
and might not know the preferred pronunciation, but also to serve as 
examples for future Lojbanization, not just of place names, but of any type
of name.

UC> What I am advocating is an innovation in the practise of Lojban, not
UC> in its principle. We already have gismu (or at least lujvo) for some
UC> countries, and fuhivla for other countries. I am merely extolling
UC> the virtues of extending the practise to cities.
UC> 

If the point is to show that you can do so, this is worthwhile - but please
note that countries made into fu'ivla will NOT have a single word.  They
will have multiple words:  gugdr,suomi  bangr,suomi  kulnr,suomi  rupnr,suomi
etc., but I would not prefer to see this done with cities.  Note that the
classification prefix system does not necessarily work unambiguously with
multiple rafsi - the rules we came up with are for single rafsi.

Now maybe you want to have a monstrosity such as bangr,tcadr,britr,londono
for the local dialect of London (as if there were just a single one).  But
most people would hate to have to say this kijda of mess (and avoid
having more than one stressed syllable) in oder to be perfectly clear.

And if you never anticipate using the brivla in all of its grammaticasl roles
of a brivla, then you might as well stick the the simpler cmevla.

lojbab