[lojban-beginners] Re: A question about gismu definitions

[Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu>]

On Thursday 17 December 2009 21:10:40 Christopher Doty wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm new to Lojban, but think it's very cool.  I'm a PhD student in
> linguistics, and it's quite fun to think about how different (and
> similar) Lojban is from natural languages.
>
> As I'm starting to learn gismu, though, I have a couple of question
> about definitions.  Consider the set of gismu below, along with their
> definitions:
>
> remna - x1 is a human/human being/man (non-specific gender-free
> sense); (adjective:) x1 is human
> prenu - x1 is a person/people (noun) [not necessarily human]; x1
> displays personality/a persona
> remsmi - r1 is humanoid/man-like in quality r2

"r2" should be "s3". I just fixed it. r2 would be the species of human, if 
there were such a place, which there should be, as paleontologists talk about 
several species of human.

> remsmismani - x1 is an ape of species x2.
> ninmu - x1 is a woman/women; x1 is a female humanoid person [not
> necessarily adult]
> nanmu -  x1 is a man/men; x1 is a male humanoid person [not necessarily
> adult]
>
> My first question is, essentially, this: what are criteria for using
> these various forms?  Is remsmi not to be used with human beings, but
> only non-human things which have some resemblance to human beings?
> (And what is "man" doing in there? Is that the "non-gender specific"
> man as in remna?) When can you use prenu with non-humans?  When
> they're sentient aliens or computers?  Can you use this for apes as
> well, even though a separate set of terms exists for apes?

remsmi is, being derived from remna, like a non-gender-specific man. And of 
course you can use "remsmi" for apes, as "remsmismani" is derived 
from "remsmi". lo tcimpazi cu remsmi lo ka pensi.

Many languages have distinct words for "man" in the male sense, "man" in the 
non-gender-specific sense, and "woman". For instance:
Latin: vir, homo, mulier
Irish: fear, duine, bean
Greek: ÎÎÎÏ, ÎÎÎÏÏÏÎÏ, ÎÏÎÎ
English used to have "wer" (cognate to "vir" and "fear"), but that's now used 
only in "werewolf" and the like.

> I suppose that my issue with this is that I'm not clear how we're
> defining 'person/people' and 'humanoid' here.  Does personhood imply
> sentience? Or only that something is alive?  Or is something like
> ninmu only used with things which are demonstrably both physically and
> mentally similar to human beings?
>
> Perhaps I'm overthinking this a bit in an effort to be truly
> "logical."  It seems like including these bits in the definition are
> intended to cover things like characters/computer game avatars/etc.,
> as well as possibly future non-human intelligences, but it seems a bit
> messy at the moment (perhaps because all such non-human entities are
> currently fictional/hypothetical).

I think you're right.

Btw, "remsmi" and "remsmismani" are lujvo, not gismu. All lujvo, fu'ivla, and 
gismu are brivla. Syntactically there is no difference, but morphologically, 
a gismu is one morpheme, a lujvo is at least two, and a type-3 fu'ivla could 
be considered two morphemes, one of which is an unikales Morphem.

> Relatedly, I'm wondering about the definitions of some gismu, like
> dunda below, that list multiple English words in the definition.
>
> dunda - x1 [donor] gives/donates gift/present x2 to
> recipient/beneficiary x3 [without payment/exchange].
>
> Am I correct in assuming that this is an effort to provide a sense of
> the concepts that the gismu covers, and not simply a list of English
> equivalents? That is, can we use dunda in ANY place where a transfer
> of an object takes place without recompense (e.g., bequeath, transmit
> (as knowledge across generations), will, etc.), or ONLY in cases where
> English specifically uses "donate" or "give?"

"dunda" can be used in any such situation. It is very general, as gismu in 
general are. You can make up words like "cedydu'a" or "seljundu'a" for more 
specific kinds of giving, or "gincerda" for inheriting genes, etc.

Pierre


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