Revenge of the Fat Gismu (no longer Re: TEXT: le gunse ku joi le lorxu)

["Dylan P. Thurston" <DPT@HUMA1.BITNET>]

la lojbab cusku di'e
 > ...
 > Even before Jorge, the wave of expanding place strutures subsided and many
 > were eliminated.  Jorge would have us eliminate still more, but I think
 > we have reached a good balance.

What complacency!  We must be ever vigilant defenders of the faith,
seeking out extraneous terbridi wherever they may hide and eradicating
them! :-)

Seriously, the gismu list is mostly excellent.  But there are still
some extra places and lapses in uniformity.  Your {klupe} is a good
example--why does it have a place for the threads when {dinko} (nail)
doesn't have one for the point?  Sorry to ask, but why haven't you
fixed it?  (Time constraints would be a good bet, I suppose.)


The "planetary characteristics" of {mluni} and {plini} was another
good example.  It's just far too vague to have a place.  (Unless it's
meant to be a material--but then the definition should say that).

Or take the motion verbs expressing a manner of movement.  I count the
following:

cadzu   x1 walks/strides/paces on surface x2 using limbs x3
bajra   x1 runs on surface x2 using limbs x3 with gait x4
stapa   x1 steps/treads on/in surface x2 using limbs x3
vofli   x1 flies [in air/atmosphere] using lifting/propulsion means x2
cpare   x1 climbs/clambers/creeps/crawls on surface x2 in direction x3 using
                        x4 [limbs/tools]
farlu   x1 falls/drops to x2 from x3 in gravity well/frame of reference x4
sfubu   x1 dives/swoops [manner of controlled falling] to x2 from x3
plipe   x1 (agent/object) leaps/jumps/springs/bounds to x2 from x3 reaching
                height x4 propelled by x5

IMHO, these are similar predicates and should have similar place
structure.  But: only some include the medium; {cpare}, uniquely among
all motion verbs, includes a direction; {bajra} but not {cadzu}
includes a gait; and {farlu}, {sfubu}, and {plipe} but not the rest
include source & destination.  As a result, it's very difficult to
talk about someone falling down an infinite pit (consider, for
instance, Alice falling down the rabbit-hole in "Alice in
Wonderland"[1]).

[1] Yes, there is a source and destination, but they're not relevant
to Alice in the middle of the fall; if I recall correctly, she wonders
at one point whether the fall will ever end.  That would currently
have to be translated as wondering whether a terbridi has a value (!).

 > One just has to be wary NOT to use a brivla
 > metaphorically unless you can metaphorize all of the places of the place
 > structure.

Yes, good advice; PROVIDED the gismu doesn't have extraneous places.

A good (very long-term) project would be to give examples for the
gismu list, covering both allowed and disallowed usages.  In
particular, this would guarantee that all the places can be filled
reasonably concisely, something I sometimes get suspicious about.

 > lojbab

mu'o mi'e. dilyn.



>From lojbab
To: DPT@HUMA1.BITNET
Subject: Re:  Revenge of the Fat Gismu (no longer Re: TEXT: le gunse ku joi le lorxu)

Why haven't we fixed klupe?  Because a while back we decided it was time
to quit playing with the language design and write the books.  Now due
to overload neither books nor design changes are getting done, but
adding changes will make that situation worse and not better.

In the case of klupe vs. dinko, it is always the case that a screw has
threads, annd it need not be the case that a dinko has a point per se
(if it does, the use of jesni might be in order to talk about it).
Furthermore, the screw threads in some kinds of screws (e.g. worm gears)
are really rather separate things than the support fopr the threads,
hence I decided not to eliminate the added place.

There is also a little history in these object gismu.  At one point very
early on, we identified a clear semantic distinction, a hierarchy as it
were from tutci-cabra-minji-zukte.  Some of the place additions came
from a mistaken attempt to say that some gismu were necessarily
subclasses of one of these - e.g. a mruli is always a tutci etc. and it
was for brevity that we trasfered some places of tutci to mruli.  The
fallacy became obvious rather quickly in a community with a lot of
science fiction readers and others with imaginations, and most were
eliminated strictlywhere they were added for that reason.  The klupe
places I think were added earlier, from thinking about the actual range
of things we wanted to cvover with klupe, so it was not changed.

lojbab
Cc: lojban





>From jimc@math.ucla.edu
To: Logical Language Group <lojbab@access.digex.net>
Subject: Re: TEXT: le gunse ku joi le lorxu 
Date: Tue, 16 May 95 08:05:45 -0700

> It actually had little to do with my studies in astronomy.  Even before I
> was serious about Loglan, others (jimc???) were arguing about adding gravity
> well places to
> "fall" and "orientation" places to directions and "standards" places to color
> s.

No, I don't think this can be blamed partially on me.  I was more
oriented to the "lean lujvo" policy.  I think.

                -- jimc