Re: la zen.

[Robin Turner <robin@xxxxxxx.xxx.xxx]

Pablo Stafforini wrote:

> From: "Pablo Stafforini" <cancrians@iname.com>
>
> For me, making a lujbo for "zen" would imply puting together contradictory
> words. In fact, I wonder if one could not make a *sintactically* incorrect
> lujbo so as to approximate its meaning... ;)

Lujvo can't be syntactically incorrect, though they can be badly formed. Malformed
lujvo are disallowed because they can be misheard, wrongly parsed by a computer, or
just too hard to pronounce.

> That said, I think that lujbo constructions in general should strive at
> giving only a close idea of the original meaning. I constantly see postings
> to the list discussing or proposing one lujbo over another. I perceive that
> behind this there is a belief in the fact that one could eventually find a
> "perfect" lujbo for every word.

I don't think anyone is really suggesting this, since it would imply that the gismu
list covers the whole of semantic space. As I've said before, it's better to coin a
lujvo than a fu'ivla, because it's easier to guess the meaning of a lujvo, but the
whole reason we have fu'ivla is because lujvo can't always do the job.

> The problem is, words aquire their meaning
> by their everyday use, and not so much by their definition, so if one should
> try to create a meaning from scratch, I think it's pointless to go beyond a
> certain point. It's up to "wear and tear" to do the rest (and for that, we
> must wait until the number of lojban speakers increses considerably).
>

Yes up to a point, but one thing that distinguishes Lojban from natlangs is that,
where there is a definition, the meaning of the word is just that, not the meaning of
the English gloss, or the way Lojbanists happen to use it. If we don't bear this in
mind, we'll have Lojbanists from different cultures using a word in the way they use
the closest word in their native language, and thus meaning different things by it.

For example, in Lojban, {ninmu} means "a female humanoid person". The English word
"woman" means "a female human adult", the Greek "gineka" means "a married female
human" and the Turkish "kadIn" means "a female human non-virgin" (actually, it's not
even that simple, since the meaning also changes according to context). Leaving
_everything_ up to everyday use would result in different meanings of {ninmu} similar
to some of the translation errors we see between natlangs. I've just finished writing
a piece on Turkish, which concludes with the following exchange I had with a Turkish
student (in English) ...

ME: She's a nice woman.
STUDENT: How do you know she's a woman?

Care needs to be taken to avoid the same kind of thing happening with Lojban.

co'o mi'e robin.