From lojban+bncCNCCoMTMDhD4vb7wBBoEx0GuGQ@googlegroups.com Sat Jul 02 15:43:19 2011 Received: from mail-yx0-f189.google.com ([209.85.213.189]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1Qd8uB-0007ux-Be; Sat, 02 Jul 2011 15:43:19 -0700 Received: by yxj20 with SMTP id 20sf1351953yxj.16 for ; Sat, 02 Jul 2011 15:43:09 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=x-beenthere:received-spf:mime-version:in-reply-to:references:from :date:message-id:subject:to:x-original-sender :x-original-authentication-results:reply-to:precedence:mailing-list :list-id:x-google-group-id:list-post:list-help:list-archive:sender :list-subscribe:list-unsubscribe:content-type; bh=QGCLenXtdL4reTWeLG4Dt9EXLdP1vUhngHPo0wdjkTw=; b=WgGpFiCsjkD1AocBV10MtYajB/EdVf1LEUbc+eJdNJzxzuxPlfhJQzfbu/xFoeNiKk 0auofowzxMZAgF1Tchfp9/mMu7xtww/18qY8/n/OfZ5aUpKlDxY14NXRNZsw3IFORalo HxiemitvnIbQVFSIt+IanDn1xvnoq07aBFwh8= Received: by 10.236.118.146 with SMTP id l18mr547043yhh.25.1309646584472; Sat, 02 Jul 2011 15:43:04 -0700 (PDT) X-BeenThere: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.231.160.132 with SMTP id n4ls3433661ibx.0.gmail; Sat, 02 Jul 2011 15:43:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.42.167.132 with SMTP id s4mr1055549icy.76.1309646583810; Sat, 02 Jul 2011 15:43:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.42.167.132 with SMTP id s4mr1055548icy.76.1309646583796; Sat, 02 Jul 2011 15:43:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail-pv0-f173.google.com (mail-pv0-f173.google.com [74.125.83.173]) by gmr-mx.google.com with ESMTPS id g20si1848277icm.5.2011.07.02.15.43.03 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Sat, 02 Jul 2011 15:43:03 -0700 (PDT) Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of selckiku@gmail.com designates 74.125.83.173 as permitted sender) client-ip=74.125.83.173; Received: by pvg3 with SMTP id 3so4478669pvg.4 for ; Sat, 02 Jul 2011 15:43:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.143.60.13 with SMTP id n13mr2034679wfk.373.1309646583131; Sat, 02 Jul 2011 15:43:03 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.142.180.6 with HTTP; Sat, 2 Jul 2011 15:42:33 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: References: <18295425.2260.1308825326908.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@yqie9> <0978f791-223c-4a08-9e67-a8cbf303beab@h17g2000yqn.googlegroups.com> From: Stela Selckiku Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2011 18:42:33 -0400 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: How it should have been. And how it could be. To: lojban@googlegroups.com X-Original-Sender: selckiku@gmail.com X-Original-Authentication-Results: gmr-mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of selckiku@gmail.com designates 74.125.83.173 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=selckiku@gmail.com; dkim=pass (test mode) header.i=@gmail.com Reply-To: lojban@googlegroups.com Precedence: list Mailing-list: list lojban@googlegroups.com; contact lojban+owners@googlegroups.com List-ID: X-Google-Group-Id: 1004133512417 List-Post: , List-Help: , List-Archive: Sender: lojban@googlegroups.com List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 7:21 PM, tijlan wrote: > > If those new words each *convey* one stable meaning as they should, > there wouldn't be much of a problem. It's ok to have "nanla", > "nakyve'a", "citnau", etc. with the same meaning, provided that the > meaning can be unambiguously understood. I'm not sure that's how languages work. Words want to occupy their own space. If you take a set of meanings where there's "nanla" and you drop in "citnau" they don't want to mean exactly the same thing. They start to bounce off of each other magnetically, until every time you choose to say "citnau" or "nanla" you're implicitly conveying a socially relevant distinction. There's nothing inherently wrong with that-- that's how natural languages came to be, and they're pretty useful-- but it does tend to lead to malglico, since the most readily available distinctions are preexisting ones. For instance I wouldn't be surprised to see the nanla/citnau split try to follow the boy / young man split in English, such that a nanla is much younger than sexual maturity, and someone might start to prefer "citnau" and be offended by "nanla" at a certain age. It's probably best to look for any Lojbanic difference we can teach and emphasize when there are similar words, instead of just leaving them as "the same" and letting them find their own subtleties. > A worse case would be a word with competing and equally-sound > definitions. This happens all the time, to greater and lesser degrees. I think we've informally created a fairly effective system for dealing with it. The first step is to make specific words that definitely produce the various possible meanings that various people want, such as longer lujvo. This clarifies the dispute, provides useful vocabulary for discussing it, and ensures that no one walks away from the table entirely empty handed-- you definitely get some word that produces the meaning you wanted to express, you might just get a slightly longer one than you'd hoped for. Then the default solution is: The meaning of the shorter term is now generalized to include both of the meanings, and the long forms can be used as necessary to disambiguate. That solution is the first considered because it's very often acceptable to everyone. None of the past uses of the term are invalidated, they're just using a more general term than they thought they were, but it'll still almost always imply exactly the same thing in context. The language is deepened by some specific vocabulary, while a broader word is given a new shape and character that tends to make it a bit less malgli and a bit more lobykai. There are of course many cases where that solution doesn't work. Most often because the meaning spaces aren't contiguous enough, so our polysemy alarms go off. In these cases what almost always wins is history. If a word has been used in a particular way for long enough or prominently enough then that meaning has dibs. There are plenty of other lujvo in the sea, go get your own. This criterion of history is necessary to keep old texts from being disrupted, but it's also fairly unambiguous, which helps provide clarity. For instance, I don't especially like the word "lujyjvo". As you may or may not know, it means lujvo that (like itself) have matching consonants on the inside facing each other: "cucycau", "samymri". I think complex-lujvo is (A) a word that doesn't particularly suggest that meaning and (B) a waste of a word that could have a very useful meaning. I would have put the meaning that's now on "lujyjvo" somewhere else, like "cijyjvo" (wrinkled lujvo). But it's very easy to resolve this dispute. You don't have to consider whether I'm right at all (incidentally, I am). The word had already been used for years before I thought to dispute it. The statute of limitations was well up. I lose. Another occasional result, though not an especially desirable one, is that the battle rages on for a while. In that case the word in question tends to become scorched earth. That's fine-- again, there are plenty of words out there, there's billions of three part lujvo. We simply avoid the area forevermore. Same thing with all the false starts and malgli, the "le'avla" and "dikyjvo" that litter our lujvoland, we just leave them there as monuments. Someday maybe it'll be so crowded that we'll need to make use of this junk-- I've always imagined le'avla as meaning the less usual situation of borrowing a word from a language which then loses that word or dies, and perhaps a dikyjvo could be a lujvo that appears regularly like for instance seasonal ones the citsyjvo-- but today is not that day. Today we live with this history while we work at making more mistakes with what's left. mi'e la stela selckiku mu'o -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group. To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.