From mark@kli.org Tue Sep 12 14:21:42 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 18685 invoked from network); 12 Sep 2000 21:20:01 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m4.onelist.org with QMQP; 12 Sep 2000 21:20:01 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO pi.meson.org) (209.191.39.185) by mta1 with SMTP; 12 Sep 2000 21:20:00 -0000 Received: (qmail 26241 invoked by uid 1000); 12 Sep 2000 21:14:46 -0000 Date: 12 Sep 2000 21:14:46 -0000 Message-ID: <20000912211446.26240.qmail@pi.meson.org> To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Eating glass, events, and rape From: "Mark E. Shoulson" X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 4296 Some thoughts I've been meaning to write about in Lojban life. They're somewhat unrelated for the most part. First, eating glass. There's the famed "I can eat glass" project on the net (http://hcs.harvard.edu/~igp/glass.html). The perpetrator of that page is assembling the phrase "I can eat glass; it doesn't hurt me" in as many languages as he can, for reasons that can only be guessed at. The Lojban answer has been there for quite a while, and reads: mi ka'e citka loi blaci .i la'edi'u na xrani mi OK, fair enough. But there are two things I take exception to, and I've written to the owner of the page about the first one. The second is a known tough chestnut in Lojban and will be dealt with in a future paragraph. The simpler problem is the use of {la'edi'u}. As it stands now, as I read it, this means "I can eat glass, and the fact that I *can* eat glass doesn't hurt me." That is, the *ability* to eat glass causes no injury (possibly {cortu} is better than {xrani}, but really not worth disputing). That's not what the English implies. It's the *eating* that doesn't hurt. I recommended changing the second sentence to {.i le nu mi ca'a go'i na xrani mi}. This uses {ca'a} to override the {ka'e} and make it actually *doing* the eating. I suppose I could have dropped the {mi} in there as well, of course. What do you folks think? The harder question is one we've hashed over before. Is {le} really the right article in {le nu...} here? It's not just some specific events of doing it, I mean it doesn't hurt in general. My gut would prefer {loi nu}, the mass of such events considered lumped together. But that's only SOME of the mass, {pisu'o loi nu...}. I mean *all* of them, or at least in general. Probably the best gadri is really the little-used {lo'e}. In which case, we probably want {lo'e nu} or {le'e nu} most of the time when we use {le nu}. We get away with it because of the specificity of {le}: "the ones I have in mind, i.e. the general case." {le} is nice that way, covering up for a lot of the possible confusion of gadri, but it's easy to abuse. Moving on abruptly to rape. For no satisfactory reason, I was puttering with translating "rape" into Lojban, and generally non-consent. I'm not going to say, "I'm looking for *the* (or even *a*) lujvo for 'rape'." Any of the possible suggestions I'll come up with could be lujvo (or veljvo for the lujvo) for the concept in The Unabridged Lojban Dictionary. The fact that those lujvo could easily be misunderstood to mean something else isn't relevant, since that's what the (putative) dictionary is for. Yes, making easily-guessed lujvo is important, but in theory it's only important in the short term, with nonce lujvo. True, that's almost all lujvo currently. This is why I feel funny with lujvo. So let's say I'm looking for a fairly obvious *tanru* instead, so ease of understanding is definitely a desideratum. OK. So I'm wandering through my gi'uste in a boring class. Let's say I want to stick with {gletu} as the tertau: some sort of forced, non-consensual copulation (as opposed to other possible interpretations of "rape"). Well, generally, finding a word for "non-consensual" isn't easy! {zifre} is glossed as "willingly," but its definition doesn't mean that; I can't take {tolzifre} to mean "unwillingly" but "required." Similar, the simpler {bapli} implies that it was forced... but not that it was unwilling. I can force you to do something you want, too. We need the (futile) *resistance* to such force in this case (and similar more common and less extreme situations too, of course). {tugni} isn't the right kind of "consent"; nor {sarxe}. Hmm... Now that I've stated it as dependent on resistance, what do you think of {se fapro gletu}, "opposed." That could work. Other choices include {vlile}--which could just mean violent but consensual, or {zekri}, which could mean incest or statutory rape, not non-consensual. Something like {palci} is a value judgement, and makes a statement rather than describes... maybe it could be understood, but it isn't the point, at least not the one I was looking at. All right, I probably could have had the above argument with some other example without subjecting everyone to thinking about rape, but that's how it occurred to me, OK? Whew. OK, I think I'm ranted out for the moment. It probably won't last. ~mark