[lojban] Re: .aunai and .a'unai

[Chris Capel <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

On 5/5/05, Adam COOPER <adamgarrigus@gmail.com> wrote:
>  Maybe 'inclination' would be a better gloss than 'desire'.

Maybe all of the words could use two glosses. I know there was an
inclination to give every word a single gloss for the purposes of the
vocabulary learning software, but that should hardly be extended to
the definitions themselves. I know that in my dictionaries (especially
the foreign language ones) words are almost never given less than two
glosses. One seems to contain the primary sense of the word, a gloss
that most accurately captures what the word is about. The second is a
word that is sort of "intersected" with the first to limit the first's
interpretation--to identify a single sense of the first which is
intended to capture the real meaning of the defined word.

So for instance, the Spanish word (IIRC) "bulto" has the glosses
"bust, statue". Bust tells you that it's a bust, and statue tells you
that it's the plaster-head kind of bust.

Chris Capel
-- 
"What is it like to be a bat? What is it like to bat a bee? What is it
like to be a bee being batted? What is it like to be a batted bee?"
-- The Mind's I (Hofstadter, Dennet)