Date: Sat, 24 Jan 1998 12:02:31 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199801241702.MAA23055@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?Jorge_J._Llamb=EDas?=" Sender: Lojban list From: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?Jorge_J._Llamb=EDas?=" Subject: Re: Summary so far on DJUNO X-To: lojban To: John Cowan X-UIDL: f85b35f9399a9f48ad02476ed1121fd4 Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2837 X-From-Space-Date: Mon Jan 26 12:42:46 1998 X-From-Space-Address: - >>But {blanu}, {remna} and {sfofa} are all one-placers. Are they as totally >>useless as {fatci}, then? > >Not useless, but semantically weak. The color words are only 1=place >bcause we could not decide which of several BAI tags was primary to the >meaning, so we left them all out. Ok, but then, whatever semantic weakness is, it doesn't make words useless. The semantically weak colour words are very useful. > remna is narrowly defined. It would be >a 2=placer if, like most other amnimals, we had a justification for a >breed/type x2 - but there are people who would consider it inherently >offensive to consider a subcategory of human as inherent to being human. That would seem to go against the claim of neutrality. What about those people that consider it inherently offensive to consider the human animal as so special? In any case, I don't really want to argue against the anomaly of {remna} (although I did argue against the anomalies of {tirxu} and {lanme}, which are much worse in my opinion). My point simply was that one-placers are not necessarily useless. >sfofa is the only one that is hard to explain by this kind of logic, but it >is a specific concrete - almost a fu'ivla in nature (probably would have >been if we had truly7 started from scratch). I expect that many concrete >fu'ivla will be one-placers. I expect them to have an x2 for the material, if they follow the tendency of the gi'uste. {sfofa} and {stizu} are kind of oddities in not having such an x2. >The special thing about fatci is of course that not only in it semantically >weak, having only one place, but it is not clear that such a thing even >exists. The supposed semantic weakness does not bare on its usefulness, as the other semantically weak words show. As for whether it exists or not, it depends on your worldview. Whether a blanu or a sfofa exist or not also depends on your worldview, so fatci is no different from them in this respect either. As for actual use, fatci has already been used several times (which is not the case for many other gismu), so if you claim that it is useless you must mean that it has been wrongly used. Obviously I disagree, since I was one of those that used it and correctly, as far as I understand. >The other 1-placer that is as weak as fatci, is munje. Barring use in >whatever tanru we devise for "universe of discourse", munje is quite useless. You must be talking about a previous version of {munje}. Now it has three places. >Most of what we say in English using the word universe will be >expressed other than as a bridi. Is that a fact? :) How would you say things other than as bridi? It would seem that most things are said as bridi. The exception might be pure attitudinals, but I don't see how you could say much about the universe using only attitudinals. co'o mi'e xorxes