[lojban-beginners] Re: anti-Zipfian gismu rant

[turnip <turnip@bcpl.net>]

>===== Original Message From "Jorge Llambías" <jjllambias@gmail.com> =====
>On 8/8/07, turnip <turnip@bcpl.net> wrote:
>>
>> Old Italian squirrels are stupid, but zebras are smart.
>> loi tolci'o natmritaliano bo ritcyratcu cu tolmencre .iki'u xirmrxipotigre 
cu
>> mencre.
>>
>> The Algerian gymnast's cassava is 10^-18 cubits long.
>> le le jerxo zajba ku samcu cu xatsi gutci.
>>
>>  So how come we have short words (gismu) for the latter set, but very long
>> words for the former set?
>
>You could have used {bebna} for "stupid".

  bebna is the opposite of prije.  Someone can be stupid without being 
foolish, and vice versa.  One implies knowledge, the other common sense.

>
>{natmritaliano} is not type-3. Type-3 would be {natmrxitaliano}.

  Please explain why?

>There is no reasonable explanation for why there is an official
>gismu {jerxo} but no {talno}. I use the unofficial {talno} for "Italian".

  I would use it, too.   But the gismu list was baselined, so that means no 
more additions, right?

>

>{tolci'o} and {mencre} don't seem to be particularly long.

  But they are not gismu.

>{ricyratcu} does not strike me as too long for "squirrel" either,


  Yes, that's true, but squirrel is the lowest frequency word of the high 
frequency group.  I could have used raccoon or rodent, as well, both having 
longer lojban translations, but slightly less frquent in the British corpus as 
well.

>and you could have used {tirxyxi'a} for "zebra".
>

  Perhaps, but there is no entry in jbovlaste, and hence no official word.  
Both have been suggested.

>We have {xatsi} because it corresponds to an SI prefix, I don't see
>a problem with that.

  I don't necessarily, either, although one could argue they don't need to be 
gismu at all.  gutci li geini'upabi works just as well.

>We have {gutci} because the language designers
>were from the US. There does not seem to be any other sensible
>explanation for having non-SI units among the gismu.
>
   "Cubit" was of course a red herring.  It could have meant feet, span, 
fathom...

>{samcu} is probably part of some gismu group or other that wouldn't
>be complete without it, but I don't know much about that.
>

  And again, "cassava" chosen as the English translation was also deliberately 
partial.  I could have said "yam" and no doubt gotten higher frequency.

>{zajba} is something of a mystery. 1987 was not an Olympic Games
>year, I wonder if {zajba} wasn't perhaps added in 1988... Then again,
>I notice that the Pan American games were held in Indianapolis in 1987
>(this year they were in Rio de Janeiro), which could perhaps help
>explain it.
>


   My point of the exercise was not so much to ask why certain words are 
gismu, but rather why certain others are not, despite their high frequency in 
natural languages, and (hand-in-hand with this) their basic conceptualness 
(outside of squirrel or zebra, but including things like rodent, which has a 
relatively low frequency, but is a pretty basic concept that could be used, 
and which could replace/augment the ratcu and smacu we have now, and allow 
lujvo for squirrels, beavers, capybara, or any of the 29 families (2277 
species) of rodents).

  (Hey, warned you it was a rant)

           --gejyspa