Message-Id: <m0sBfuq-0009acC@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Wed, 17 May 1995 05:58:59 -0400
Reply-To:     Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Sender:       Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From:         Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Subject:      Re: Revenge of the Fat Gismu (no longer Re: TEXT: le gunse ku joi
              le lorxu)
To:           Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Content-Length: 1445
Lines: 25

Why haven't we fixed klupe?  Because a while back we decided it was time to
quit playing with the language design and write the books.  Now due to
overload neither books nor design changes are getting done, but adding changes
will make that situation worse and not better.

In the case of klupe vs. dinko, it is always the case that a screw has threads,
annd it need not be the case that a dinko has a point per se (if it does, the
use of jesni might be in order to talk about it).  Furthermore, the screw
threads in some kinds of screws (e.g. worm gears) are really rather separate
things than the support fopr the threads, hence I decided not to eliminate
the added place.

There is also a little history in these object gismu.  At one point very
early on, we identified a clear semantic distinction, a hierarchy as it were
from tutci-cabra-minji-zukte.  Some of the place additions came from a
mistaken attempt to say that some gismu were necessarily subclasses of one
of these - e.g. a mruli is always a tutci etc. and it was for brevity that we
trasfered some places of tutci to mruli.  The fallacy became obvious rather
quickly in a community with a lot of science fiction readers and others with
imaginations, and most were eliminated strictlywhere they were added for
that reason.  The klupe places I think were added earlier, from thinking
about the actual range of things we wanted to cvover with klupe, so it was
not changed.

lojbab