Date:  Thu, 9 Oct 1997 19:42:23 -0500 (EST)
Message-Id: <199710100042.TAA20185@locke.ccil.org>
Reply-To: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS <jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS <jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR>
Subject:      Re: Dvorak (& Lojban)
X-To:         lojban <lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu>
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
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 cu'u la lojbab
 >All measureable objects have an amount of longness (which may
>also be identical to their amount of shortness).

I'm not sure I'm understanding what you mean. Could you
translate into Lojban? I suppose you are not saying that:

        ro mitre cu ckaji le ka clani
        Every measurable object has the property of being long.

That, to me, is the same as saying:

        ro mitre cu clani
        Every measurable object is long.

>A short object will have a small amount of
>longness, and sure enough this corresponds to length.

The trouble with this is that length is objective, while longness
is subjective. A not very long river may have greater length
than a very long road, for example. So here amount of longness
would seem to go against length. We could say:

                le dargu cu mutce le ka clani
                The road is much in being long.

                le rirxe cu toltce le ka clani
                The river is little in being long.

                le rirxe le dargu cu zmadu le ka mitre
                The river is more than the road in length.

> I am not sure
>whether the amount of shortness increases or decreases with length, but it
>would seem likely to be inverse of length %^).

For me they are independent concepts. Measurable objects have
length, by definition. In Lojban that sounds even more like a truism:

                ro mitre cu ckaji le ka mitre

but they don't necessarily have shortness or longness. These are
subjective properties that depend much on the context. I wouldn't
use objective words like {kilto} with subjective words like {clani}
or {tordu}, unless it's metaphorical. Something like:

                        ti ta kilto le ka clani
                        This is a thousand times that in longness.

is akin to something like:

                       ti ta kilto le ka melbi
                       This is a thousand times that in beauty.

Both are unverifiable subjective statements. On the other hand,
you can check, by measuring, a statement like:

                       ti ta kilto le ka mitre
                       This is a thousand times that in length.

(A more precise wording would be:

                       ti ta kilto le ka ke'a mitre makau
                       This is a thousand times that in how many
                        meters they measure.

or whatever new cmavo was created to replace ke'a in such
places. Also {makau} can be replaced with {li xokau}.)

 I know that the word "long" is sometimes used in an objective sense
in English, as in "how long is this object?", but I don't think that the
Lojban word {clani} can be used to translate the objective sense
of English "long". It only has its subjective sense.

co'o mi'e xorxes