Re: [lojban] Re: [jbovlaste] jbovlaste natlang word voting question

[Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org>]

On Sun, May 13, 2007 at 04:01:08PM +0200, Arnt Richard Johansen
wrote:
> On Sat, May 12, 2007 at 08:17:08PM -0700, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> > 
> > As a related philosophical issue, is it OK for the second place
> > of sampli to mean both "computer program" and "computer" (as is
> > currently the case)?  Why or why not?  I'm honestly not sure one
> > way or the other.
> 
> No.
> 
> Because "se sampli" doesn't actually *mean* "computer program" or
> "computer", but "something that is used by a computer user".
> Pointing people to "sampli" when they were looking for a good
> translation of "computer program" or "computer" is misleading.
> 
> Perhaps a more extreme example would help illustrate this. Suppose
> that someone writes an entry for "tikpa" in which the x2 points to
> "thing". That is correct, strictly speaking, because the x2 of
> "tikpa" always is a thing. But it is misleading, because not every
> thing is a se tikpa. Likewise, not every computer and computer
> program is a se sampli.

True, but a computer that never gets used is a pretty rare beast,
no?

-Robin