Message-Id: <199608070452.AAA13994@locke.ccil.org>
Date:         Tue, 6 Aug 1996 23:57:05 -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: male/female, man/woman, human/person
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
Status: U
Content-Length: 2934

>> Meaning is a sticky issue that we avoid defining as much as we can, and so
>> synonymy of predicates is not part of the Lojban definition.
>  How can the definer of a language avoid defining meaning of words?
>Isn't meaning a fundamental necesity in both speaking and understanding a
>language?


It is easy to avoid defining the meaning of words - just fail to do so.
We have seen MANY MANY lujvo proposed or used without defined place strutures,
but they continuye to be used and useful.
]

Since we have no universal calculus of meaning, and are not up to writing an
entirely in-Lojban dictionary (not that it would help that much), most
Lojban words are still defined interms of similarities or differences from
related English words.  That is how they are "defined" - what the words
actually "mean" is something that will not be fully known until we have a
fluent speaking community to define the meaning independently of other
llanguages.

>  My understanding is that "prenu" is basically the same word as "person"
>in English (at least, according to its definition in the dictionary).

This is the problem with dictionarioes that try to define words in terms of
other languages.  It would be rather difficult to come up with a brief
definition of prenu that did not strongly suggest that it is synonymous with
English "person" modulo the fact that teh English word is a noun, and the
Lojban word a more flexible brivla.  I am not sure that I am capable of
describing what difference there are from the English word, but that brivla
nature is one thing that makes sure that there will be some differences.

>Saying someone is a person doesn't imply that they are human, true, but it
>also implies, in my opinion, at least sentience.

The English word does so.  The Lojban word does not specify that sentience
is required, and I would prefer that it not be specified until/unless such
is done totally within a Lojban speaking community based on no considerations
for English.

>  One might call the
>inhabitants of a kingdom of intelligent cats the "Cat people", but it
>would be erroneous to call a normal felis familias a person.

There are cat lovers who would disagree %^)  Whether a particular instance of
felis familias is a "person" no doubt depends on whether said cat exhibits
"personality" to the observer to an extent that distinguishes the cat from
"non-persons".

>  Anyway, my point is this: why do we need gismu that can easily be
>duplicated by by tanru/lujvo?  It seems counter-productive to the goal of
>an easily learned language.


As I said in another post, redundancy of gismu was not considered important
to avoid.  The difference of a few words is not going to affect how easily the
language is learned, especially since, as now seems to be the case, one needs
to have some considerabel facility with lujvo vocabulary in order to be
fluent in the language (as opposed to merely communicative).

lojbab