The thing about names is that they are given, not just whipped up on the spur of the mome= nt, and not, usually, because of some property of the named (though I= doubt that Bear is a Chihuahua). They are also relatively permanent = or at least less contextually dependent than descriptions. That being said,= the content of a name can be the same as that of a description, so that it= might happen that (perhaps unwittingly) someone refers to la cribe as le c= ribe or (certainly unwittingly) as lo cribe, Someone might do the sam= e with la pinpin (a large brown chow). But in none of these cases is = the name affected nor is the animal named or renamed. Naming is a con= scious and ritual act (the ritual may be barely noticed or may take a week of hoopla), quite different from the off-hand patch job that is for {le} o= r the supposed careful observation for {lo}

From: .arpis. <rpglover64+jbobau@gmail.com>
= To: lojban@googlegroups.comSent: Wed, May 18, 2011 = 12:25:59 PM
Subject: Re= : [lojban] What's in a name?

Okay; makes sense.

On Wed, May 18, 2011 a= t 8:06 AM, Michael Turniansky <mturniansky@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 7:27 AM, Alex Rozenshteyn <<= a rel=3D"nofollow" ymailto=3D"mailto:rpglover64@gmail.com" target=3D"_blank= " href=3D"mailto:rpglover64@gmail.com">rpglover64@gmail.com> = wrote:

But as I understand it, a cooperative speaker (correct me if I'm misusing t= he term) wouldn't name a dog "The Great Depression" as anything but a joke.=

I don't see how you say that.&nb= sp; My dog's name is Bear in English, la cribe in lojban. He is certa= inly not lo cribe, nor even le cribe. My daughters' name in lojban wo= uld be la melbi, but she also happens to be lo melbi be mi and so therefore= le melbi, but that is not the same as her name. Now for something li= ke "The Roaring Twenties", yeah, "la" would definitely be in order. T= he Great Depression is a border case. The point is that it certainly = was an economic depression and it certainly was great. So "le" can be used,= so could "la".

Furthermore, The Great Depression is a name that is used to r= efer to the time period by many, not just me.

How many people call something a particu= lar name has absolutely no bearing on whether something is a la or not. Eve= n if I'm the only one to call you by a particular nickname, I still use "la= ". The point is whether it's strictly a label or whether in fact it's truly= descriptive.

I might expect someone using {lo} to be referring to some other time pe= riod which can be reasonable described as a "great depression", and {le} wo= uld still make me wonder if they meant this particular one.

My heuristic tended to be, if it's capitalized in English, (usually) us= e {la}, since if it's capitalized in English, it refers to a particular thi= ng (which may not be a good terbri), unlike {le}, which can refer to one th= ing in one sentence and another in another.

And that's a great heuristic. But again, just l= ike "Michael" may refer to different people in different contexts, there's = no guarantee that "Great Depression" refers to only one period in time, in = one place (or not, as I said, a dog, a nickname for a pothole in the highwa= y (I know, a joke in English, but not in the lojban), etc.) So in tha= t respect, it's not much different than "le".

Even now, when I refer to the Great Depr= ession, I am referring to the period between 1929-1939 in the United States= . But someone else might mean 1873-1896, which was also referred to a= s that. Someone else might be referring to the album by Trigger= the Bloodshed, etc. etc. (see http://en.wikipedi= a.org/wiki/The_Great_Depression_%28disambiguation%29 for other ideas)&n= bsp; So yeah, you can use "la" but in this particular case it also happens = to be descriptive, and "le" would work as well.

--ge= jyspa

On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 10:04 PM, Michael Tu= rniansky <mt= urniansky@gmail.com> wrote:
Well, the point to remember is that "la banli nu pi= ndi" refers to a particular something/someone that may not be a great depre= ssion. It's just a name. I could name my dog "la banli nu pindi= ", and then I could say "la banli nu pindi cu muvgau lo rebla be vo'a" But = it would less likely to be true to say "le banli nu pindi cu muvgau lo rebl= a be vo'a" since here I am actually speaking about something that I am desc= ribing AS being a great depression (whether it is or not, that's how = I'm choosing to describe it. It might be a dog, but that's highly unlikely)= . So if you are speaking about the period that in the United states l= asted from 1929-1939, use "le" (or even "lo")

= ; --gejyspa

On= Tue, May 17, 2011 at 2:15 PM, .arpis. <rpglover64+jbobau@gmail.com= > wrote:

When shoul= d one use a descriptive name as opposed to a non-name? e.g. (using {pindi} = because I don't know enough economics to accurately translate "depression")=
{le banli nu pindi} vs {la banli nu pindi}

--
mu'o mi'e .arpis.

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