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

[turnip <turnip@bcpl.net>]

Pierre made one point that I wanted to add my voice to.

>===== Original Message From Robert LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org> =====
>Pierre Abbat wrote:
>> On Thursday 09 August 2007 14:09, turnip wrote:
>>>  But you _do_ have a gismu for llama -- kumte.... see??   There's more
>>>than 500,000,000 raccoons in the world (and yes, mostly concentrated in
>>>North America, but ~1 million in Germany's forest, and also in Asia and
>>>South America), and about 25 million camels, alpacas, llamas, and vicunas
>>>combined. So again, who makes the decision on where to split the hairs
>>>(hares? ;-) ) ? (Personally, I don't think there should be a gismu for
>>>raccoon, but I do think there should be for rodent).
>>
>> Lojban has two gismu for kinds of rodents but none for rodent in general, 
two
>> for galliforms and two for anseriforms but none for any other order or more
>> specific taxon of bird, two for the genus Canis and one for foxes. This has
>> often made me hesitate when coining a word for some animal.
>
>Lojban animal and plant words were NOT necessarily designed to reflect
>the scientific taxonomy, but rather the linguistic taxonomy.  Thus a
>Lojbanic raccoon could be a "pre-dog" (procyon, the genus name), or
>could mimic other languages and call it a "hand-mammal" or a
>"wash-bear".  The fact that it is not Ursae does not mean that it cannot
>be a kind of cribe.

    Understood, but things are still mystifying.  There is a distinction 
between mice and rats, which are very very similar (why "ratcu" and not 
"brasmacu" for example?), but yet no words for animals which are much less 
similar (beaver, capybara, chipmunk, etc), but have to be described by 
pointing to one or the other.   How would one choose between ricyratcu and 
ricysmacu for example?

  (BTW, long ago, when I did refer to a raccoon in the chatroom, I chose 
something like "nocturnal-garbage-eater"...)

  Also, earlier you said in re: raccoons:
>> There's more than
>> 500,000,000 raccoons in the world (and yes, mostly concentrated in North
>> America, but ~1 million in Germany's forest, and also in Asia and South
>> America)

> Looking on Wikipedia, it appears to be native only to the Western hemisphere
>(and mostly North American at that), but has been introduced into the Eastern
> hemisphere.

    I was going to respond that much the same can be said about turkey, 
(xruki) but I know you are going to object that it is an important food bird, 
so I withdraw the objection.

                   --gejyspa