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

[Bob LeChevalier <lojbab@access.digex.net>]

Dylan:
>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]).

At one point they all (?) were identical to klama in place structure.
But the lean gismu people wanted redundancy eliminated.  So now you
bajra klama or cadzu klama.  Indeed, I think there are remnants of the
old place structure in some examples in the draft textbook.

In other cases, places were added to account for cultural or
metaphorical uses of words.  You can walk on your hands - so we added
thhe specific limbs.  The gaits of 4-legged animal motions apply to
various degrees of running (you could say that walking is a specific
kind of running gait in a 4-legged animal).  Direction was added to
climb when we expanded it to include clamber and crawl, which tend to be
related etymologically in many languages. plipe was always a pain
because its English and other language equivalents tend to be used for
both jumping/springing up jumping over, and jumping from/to. the
specificity of the place structure was the best way we could think of to
clarify the core meaning and exclude those things we did not think fit
the core concept (or force them to be lujvo).

MANY gismu place structure decisions were made ad hoc based on specific
pragmatic usage considerations, and NOT on the basis of creating some
ideal mapping of concept space.  Indeed I think we have explicitly
REJECTED the idea that the gismu should be considered anything like an
ideal - that our vocabulary should be in some way a philosopher's
language combining pure essences to analytically cover all concepts.
Many conlangs have tried for the latter, and we didn't want to.

>[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 (!).

clearly la alis. za'o zo'o farlu ma

Whether a place is relevant is less important than whether it exists.
You could always use lo cimni.

The tougher question is xu lo mluni cu farlu ma ma.

lojbab