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

[Christopher Doty <suomichris@gmail.com>]

Hi Pierre,

Thanks for your quick response.  My replies are interspersed below.

On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 19:30, Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu> wrote:
> 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: ανηρ, ανθρωπος, γυνη
> English used to have "wer" (cognate to "vir" and "fear"), but that's now used
> only in "werewolf" and the like.

Right, but in English we tend not to use "man" for this (anymore),
using instead "people" or "human beings" or something.  It just seems
odd to use the term "man" when it is outdated, potentially construed
as sexist by some, and--most of all--confusing for newbies like me :p
Maybe this usage is a relic of the Loglan days?

>> 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.

Okay, I suppose this can wait until such aliens/computers actually
show up.  Still, it might be worth trying to sort out what is meant by
"person" and "humanoid" for the purposes of writing/translation, both
for science fiction, and for various recent movements to grant some of
the legal rights of personhood to great apes, for example.

> 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.

Ah, yes, right, thanks. Still trying to get the hang of lojban terminology.

> "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.

Okay, so it's safe to assume that, when a gismu has a definition with
a whole slew of English terms, those aren't really English equivalents
as such, but simply pointing to the idea conveyed by the various
English terms?

stevo: Hello! Hopefully my assorted odd questions go over a bit
smoother on this list!