Message-Id: <m0r8rcY-00005XC@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Sat, 19 Nov 1994 10:20:08 EST
Reply-To:     bob@GNU.AI.MIT.EDU
Sender:       Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@FINHUTC.hut.fi>
From:         bob@GNU.AI.MIT.EDU
Subject:      Re: quick comment on {loi}
To:         lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu
In-Reply-To:  <199411190403.XAA04478@albert.gnu.ai.mit.edu> (message from Jorge
              Llambias on Fri, 18 Nov 1994 20:19:19 EST)
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jorge@phyast.pitt.edu said:
   For a single cat, it makes little difference to use {lo mlatu} or
   {loi mlatu}.

Depends on what you want to say.  When I distinguish between the
cat that can be squeezed very hard by a three year old  and the cat
that must be treated gently, I use {le} and {lo}, the first for the
stuffed toy, the second for the `for real' cat.

When I am talking about a part of the web of life, and using
categories that young children learn first, then I use {loi}.

(Lakoff quotes Brown as saying that children learn genus level
categories first; i.e., entities at the middle of hierarchies, the
level at which things are distingished by distinctive actions: a cat
is for petting, a flower is for looking and sniffing; what can be
pointed to or pantamimed.  {loi} fits this categorization level like a
{gluta} (mitten/glove); put another way, the first places of many
gismu could have been written with Lakoff and Brown in mind.)

   Couldn't the programmer use {lo} for [an instance of a class.] too?

Yes.  In some circumstances that would be more appropriate.  (For
example, some of the entities on my screen right now may not be
`really' windows in the context of someone programming my display...)

   > (I have
   > three instances of class Window on my screen right now.)

   And that would be {ci lo me la'o gy Window gy}. No {loi} there.

As I say, depends on what you are trying to convey.

    Robert J. Chassell               bob@gnu.ai.mit.edu
    25 Rattlesnake Mountain Road     bob@grackle.stockbridge.ma.us
    Stockbridge, MA 01262-0693 USA   (413) 298-4725