[lojban-beginners] Re: Help! The Xorlo are attacking!

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 11:53 AM, A. PIEKARSKI <totus@rogers.com> wrote:
>
> No wonder everyone is confused!  Exactly where are cmene and cmevla
> definitively defined?

Are you asking about the meanings of the Lojban words, or the meanings
of the English words borrowed from Lojban? The definitions in
jbovlaste seem right for the Lojban words:

cmene: x1 (quoted word(s)) is a/the name/title/tag of x2 to/used-by
namer/name-user x3 (person).
cmevla: x1 is a morphologically defined name word meaning x2 in language x3.

The meaning of the English words, which were borrowed from Lojban, we
would have to find in a (very complete) English dictionary.

The Lojban word "cmene" has always meant just "name" in Lojban, it was
never restricted to just those Lojban words ending in a consonant.

The English word "cmene" on the other hand, borrowed from Lojban, was
originally used to mean "Lojban name word" (i.e. those Lojban words
ending in a consonant).

At some point, after CLL and LfB were written, we decided that using
"cmene" in English with this specialized meaning was a bad idea,
because "cmene" doesn't mean and never meant that in Lojban. So at
that point English borrowed a new word from Lojban, "cmevla", to refer
to those Lojban words that end in a consonant. "cmene" is now used in
English to mean "(any) Lojban name", which is still more restricted
than its meaning in Lojban.

When using words borrowed from Lojban in English, the meaning of the
Lojban word is not always preserved. For example "gadri" in Lojban
means "article", but when used in English it is usually restricted to
"Lojban article".

mu'o mi'e xoxes