Given the paucity of long Lojban passages. it is hard to say w= hat the conventions are about repeating words. I expect that the aest= hetics of native languages will carry over, at least for a while. On = the other hand, I expect that synonyms (up to thesaurus grade) will be crea= ted for most existing words, including gismu -- at least partly simply to c= over lapses of memory. I haven't run through the gismu list in a very= long time, but my memory is that there were only a few (maybe the classic = 5+/- 2) cases of real synonymy at the x1 level (and even then with differen= ces in the oblique cases), though there were more when exchange came into p= lay (again, with differences in the oblique cases). As for learning n= ew words, synonymy is rearely the best approach, certainly as compared with a number of examples (to weed out extraneous features) and to the dra= matic version of that, telling a story in which the new word plays a signif= icant role.

From: djandus <jandew@gmail.com>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Fri, May 13, 2011 8:01:21 AM
Subject: Re: [lojban] Lojban Thinking

On Friday, May 13, 2011 7:16:22 AM UTC-5, xorxes wrote:
On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 5:11 AM, djandus <<= a rel=3D"nofollow">jan...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I meant there wo= uldn't be as close of synonyms as in English. As far as I
> know, the= re aren't Lojban words with as close of meaning as "pretty" vs.
> "be= autiful" or "hard" vs. "difficult".
"nandu" vs "tolfrili"
> Also= , I shifted in my mind, but did not write it, from thinking about
> d= ictionaries to thinking about speech in Lojbanistan. Thus, my example {ko'a=
> melbi mi} was a good one, where I had in mind two people who know = each
> other, and the definer points to something specifically pretty= and makes his
> statement.
Assumung the pretty thing is in fro= nt of the speaker, how would you
tell whether the definer was defining "melbi" or "crane"?
By another example, as I'd imagin= e learning new words as a beginner would always run for any language :)&nbs= p;
But in general, yes, th= at's how people learn how to use most words in
any language, by imitatin= g others.
> Anyway, if you could give me an example where a Lojban= word is best defined
> with the aid of a synonym, that'd be extremel= y helpful to me.
There are many "tol"-pairs: lenku-tolglare, xlali-to= lxamgu, cmalu-tolbarda, ...
Also there are "sel"- or "ter"-pairs: rir= ni-selpanzi, cpacu-tersabji, ...
Even if they are not always exact sy= nonyms one can often help in
defining the other.
Then there's thin= gs like "jivbu" and "nivji" which seem almost synonymous to me.
Ah, but they are very different (to different people :P )
(I don't actually know the difference, only that people who kn= ow it are very particular about it...)
mu'o mi'e xorxes

As for everything else, let me clarify a bit.

As = far as I know, (once again) all of these lujvo examples are ones created on= -the-fly, not explicitly defined. For that, they are extremely similar to t= heir basic tanru counterparts in this case, at least in that forming the wo= rd did not take recalling a basic familiar word so much as forming a new de= scription from distinct words.

Basically, what I'm saying is if s= omeone asks for the meaning of {lenku}, and you give {tolglare}, it's a des= cription, the polar opposite. Thanks to Lojban's system of lujvo and tanru,= when someone asks for one lujvo's meaning, there's probably a good way of describing it, purely with a selbri. When either person is interpreting= this new combination, it's being interpreted by each individual part's mea= ning -- still completely different from giving "hard" as a synonym for "dif= ficult". This is what I mean: Lojban makes describing things so simple and = straightforward that we start doing it without even realize we're going thr= ough that effort. It's so simple to give {tolglare}, so obvious, but there = is no other basic gismu that means the same thing as {lenku}. If there were= , that would be a failure on Lojban's part. And I'm comparing this to thing= s like "hard" vs. "difficult", to which I place no difference in meaning wh= en I use them. In fact, the only reason I use "difficult" is because "hard"= has two meanings, and I try to avoid that confusion. We even have defined = the Lojban word for "difficult" with the gloss word "hard". They're two bas= ic English words with the same usefulness in one respect, and when you use one in one sentence, you're culturally pressured to use another in= the next, to avoid repetitiveness. But do we ever pressure Lojbanists to u= se {tolglare} if they used {lenku} recently? This is the fundamental differ= ence I'm trying to point out -- the natlangs I have used expect extremely s= imilar synonyms for the vast majority of words. Not different in part of sp= eech or anything, at most slightly nuanced in connotation and at worst mere= ly colloquial. And then they expect the speaker to have them all on hand to= swap freely between them arbitrarily. Lojban instead simply says "Here's a= set of unique basic words, and the rules for pulling the nuances out of th= eir meanings. Have a field day." And it just works.

As for fu'ivl= a, that doesn't count -- if you're borrowing a word from another language, = then of course there's a synonym.

tl;dr

= My restriction was on gismu and Lojban culture, not borrowed words and descriptions.

My claim is that Lojban, lacking basic gismu s= ynonyms for simplicity, makes it feel more natural to try to define words w= ith useful descriptions or examples rather than first searching for a basic= synonym.

I don't say that Lojban makes the descriptive or exampl= e process easier, it just cuts out that middle bit where you realize you al= ready know a basic word for that.

-djandus

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