Message-Id: <199608061733.NAA13081@locke.ccil.org>
Date:         Tue, 6 Aug 1996 09:50:18 -0700
Reply-To: David A Johnston <davejohn@POGO.WV.TEK.COM>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: David A Johnston <davejohn@POGO.WV.TEK.COM>
Subject:      Re: male/female, man/woman, human/person
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
In-Reply-To:  <199608061552.IAA21860@sun.lclark.edu>
Status: U
Content-Length: 2314

> Similarly, tanru of the form "nanmu/ninmu broda" are hard to construe.  Just
>  what
> is supposed to be a "male human" or "female human" attribute, beyond the
> anatomical?  It's too culture-specific.

  Yes, but this isn't wha I was talking about.  I was refering to the
difference between the two brivla "ninmu" and "fetpre".  Perhaps I've
misunderstood what you mean, but  attributes don't come into this any more
than they do in any brivla.  A bridi is the statement of a relationship,
and to express that you have to use the words you have.  To do _that_, you
have to have an agreed upon meaning for those words.

> 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?

> In addition, "fetpre" may include a female cat that has a personality (to the
> speaker), whereas "ninmu" surely excludes such a one.  I think the use of
> "humanoid" in the place structure is plain waffling.... female chimps?
> female ETIs?

  My understanding is that "prenu" is basically the same word as "person"
in English (at least, according to its definition in the dictionary).
Saying someone is a person doesn't imply that they are human, true, but it
also implies, in my opinion, at least sentience.  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.

  Observe: 1. ninmu   = woman (humanoid, non-age-specific)
           2. fetpre  = femal person
           3. fetre'a = female human
           4. fetsi [similar-to-] remna = female humanoid

(sorry about 4 -- I don't know exactly how to say that...)

  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.

-marvin

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