| One of the features of flying across six time zones is that you end up with a distorted sleep cycle. So, I have been waking up at weird times (and falling asleep at weird times, too, but that is not so objectionable -- or so useful) and when I do ideas turn up in my head that I can't get their in the normal course of things. Which just happened in re xorxes' {lo'e}: xorxes insists that his {lo'e} is not that of Lojban, but he also wants it to have the semantic properties of that locution (and {le'e} and "the average ..." if we still had one of those). These, while in the shape of sumti, are, in fact, shorthand for fairly complex constructions -- and different constructions in different contexts. What binds them together are the properties that are actually (standard {lo'e}) or thought to be ({le'e}) typical of members of a class. In various contexts, a {le/o'e} may bring up some of those properties or a thing that has them or ... (I haven't looked with all the possibilities here, so I can't give a complete list), or simply describe what one of those properties is. xorxes want his {lo'e} to do this as well -- with, I suppose, the properties universal or defining to a set. Unfortunately for me (and you all -- if there is still anyone reading this besides xorxes), he chose to describe this usage with a word that just doesn't fit: "type." So, I have been riffing on types and tokens -- which are not (in sort of standard usage) idiomatic, but normal referential words referring to abnormal things. And xorxes has, in that context, been trying to sort out some of the semantic expansions of his _expression_ in various contexts. His "use" is, I think, mainly about things which have the properties embedded in his lo'e ... and, I suspect, his "talk about" will turn out to be expanding on what those properties are. That is, {mi nelci lo'e sfofa} means I like things that have certain properties had by sofas and and {ta simsa lo'e sfofa} means that that has some properties of sofas (or some closely related properties, perhaps). I expect examples of talking about to be like {lo'e sfofa cu nilce} or {lo'e sfofa cu clani}, pulling out the properties involved. If this is correct, then I don't really see much difference between xorxes {lo'e} and Lojban's -- except perhaps a stricter rule for what counts as a relevant property, which may or may not be significant. |