Message-Id: <m0qUSwg-000023C@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Sun, 31 Jul 1994 00:49:05 -0400
Reply-To:     Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Sender:       Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@FINHUTC.hut.fi>
From:         Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Subject:      Re: current cmene project
To:           Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Content-Length: 2168
Lines: 41

And writes:
UC>       [I take this opportunity to emend this to 'People's Republic
UC>        of China'. Had I been writing in Lojban my usage would have
UC>        been correct, since in Lojban 'la grg' means 'that which I
UC>        am calling "grg"'. If, however, I has used a fuhivla whose
UC>        denotation is the island of Taiwan, then my usage would have
UC>        been in error, since I was intending to refer to mainland
UC>        China.]

No.  Only if you mark it with as "lo" are you claiming veridicality, and
then you are not claiming uniqueness.  If I say "mi klama lo tcadrlondono"
you may not assume that the referent is the city where you live, since
the predicate has several referents - I believe there is one in Ontario,
and I am sure in several states of the US.

The only real advantage I can see in making fu'ivla for names is
a) when you want to modify them metaphorically in the tanru manner
  (as opposed to with a relative clause, which CAN be used with a name)
b) when the name comes across better as a loan-translation which has meaning
   - Bob Slaughter's Snake River is an excellent example

Otherwise, you have a longer, less recognizable to the native speaker, word,
since the standard for nonce fu'ivla is to use the classification markers
(tcadr- in this case).  If there is real need to make a fu'ivla for a
particular city, excessive use of the nonce fu'ivla making would make it
impossible to define such a fu'ivla more sp[ecifically (i.e. defining
for dictionary purposes that tcadrlondono refers only to the capital of the
UK as its official denotation, because usage demands regular use of the
fu'ivla form for that one referent and rarely if ever ofr other possible
referents.

UC> Quite right. "ro lohi tcadrbeidjinu" [if this means 'the set of all
UC> x such that x is a Beijing City'] has one member.

1) You want piro  - all of the set.
2) This is true only if there is indeed only one city in the world with
    that fu'ivla as its Lojbanization.  I presume that China has a LOT of
    cities, and possibly there are some duplicates down at the small
    localities level, if not for this particular name.

lojbab