Re: [lojban-beginners] Why is CAhA a tense/modal?

[Adam Lopresto <adamlopresto@gmail.com>]

There are two distinct points being argued at cross purposes here, and we're moving beyond the scope of the beginners list.

Should the official definitions of Lojban words be written in Lojban? Probably, though as you see, there is some debate. 

Are the Lojban definitions of Lojban words currently on jbovlaste official? Certainly not. They were entered by anyone who wanted to, and hopefully mostly checked, but who knows? They are not official in any sense. The current official definitions are the ones in English. And the new BPFK definitions are also being written in English, though some include Lojban definitions or equivalences.

On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 9:01 AM, Luke Bergen <lukeabergen@gmail.com> wrote:

That seems like a moot point.  "We shouldn't use lojban as the canonical word definition language because we won't be able to define every word without coming to a point of circularity".  We would have the same problem defining anything in terms of anything else.  You're just crossing language borders to include english in the circularity (i.e. what is "lo", it's an article like "the", what is "the"?  Well now you're in a loop of english definitions.  It's not avoiding the problem, it's just expanding it to make it multi-lingual.

> Many (all?) languages lack vocabulary for concepts in other cultures. Lacking words doesn't mean that a 

> language (Klingon, in particular) can't be used to talk about those concepts.

Exactly, that's why the lojbanic culture would probably be best served by lojbanic definitions for it's words.

When the official dictionary does come out, I'll probably be buying the english <-> lojban verison of it.  But I don't think that the official definitions should be derived from how english describes a lojbanic word.  That seems malgli to the extreme.

On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 9:21 AM, Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu> wrote:

On Thursday 21 April 2011 01:14:38 Jonathan Jones wrote:
> Ideally, /every/ Lojban word should be defined in Lojban. And whenever a
> word /is/, that most certainly /is/ the canonical definition.

It's impossible to define every word in a language in the same language
without circularity. There must be some definitions which refer to things
outside the language. All words for species of organisms: "cinfo", for
instance, is defined as any organism of breed x2 which belongs to the species
Panthera leo, which is in turn defined by a type specimen.

Pierre
--
La sal en el mar es más que en la sangre.
Le sel dans la mer est plus que dans le sang.

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