On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 8:10 PM, Christopher Doty
<suomichris@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi all,
I'm new to Lojban, but think it's very cool. I'm a PhD student in
linguistics, and it's quite fun to think about how different (and
similar) Lojban is from natural languages.
As I'm starting to learn gismu, though, I have a couple of question
about definitions. Consider the set of gismu below, along with their
definitions:
remna - x1 is a human/human being/man (non-specific gender-free
sense); (adjective:) x1 is human
prenu - x1 is a person/people (noun) [not necessarily human]; x1
displays personality/a persona
remsmi - r1 is humanoid/man-like in quality r2
remsmismani - x1 is an ape of species x2.
ninmu - x1 is a woman/women; x1 is a female humanoid person [not
necessarily adult]
nanmu - x1 is a man/men; x1 is a male humanoid person [not necessarily adult]
My first question is, essentially, this: what are criteria for using
these various forms? Is remsmi not to be used with human beings, but
only non-human things which have some resemblance to human beings?
(And what is "man" doing in there? Is that the "non-gender specific"
man as in remna?) When can you use prenu with non-humans? When
they're sentient aliens or computers? Can you use this for apes as
well, even though a separate set of terms exists for apes?
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).
Relatedly, I'm wondering about the definitions of some gismu, like
dunda below, that list multiple English words in the definition.
dunda - x1 [donor] gives/donates gift/present x2 to
recipient/beneficiary x3 [without payment/exchange].
Am I correct in assuming that this is an effort to provide a sense of
the concepts that the gismu covers, and not simply a list of English
equivalents? That is, can we use dunda in ANY place where a transfer
of an object takes place without recompense (e.g., bequeath, transmit
(as knowledge across generations), will, etc.), or ONLY in cases where
English specifically uses "donate" or "give?"
Thanks in advance! I'm sure y'all'll be got lots more of these
esoteric types of questions from me in the future :p
Chris