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[lojban] Re: antiblotation (was: RE: taksi
At 01:58 PM 5/28/03 +0100, And Rosta wrote:
filip:
> On 28 May 2003 at 0:43, jjllambias2000 wrote:
>
> > The place structure for taksi is perhaps the least obvious of the
> > three, but almost certainly I would bet it has the passengers/cargo in
> > x2.
>
> Probably also a place for area of operation (most taxis I know operate
> only in one city, or in a defined rural area)
>
> Not so sure about driver or fare
For any place structure:
Step 1.
Draw up a list of candidate places. There will be infinitely many
to select from, but make sure they include those things that might
be difficult to express by means of other locutions.
Step 2.
For each candidate place, check whether you really want to define (e.g.)
taksi so that something is not a taksi if there is no passenger, or
no area of operation, or no driver, or no fare. Discard any candidates
that are thus inessential. This avoids making the brivla mean something
other than what was intended.
Slight caveat here: remember that Lojban predicates are "tenseless".
Thus the question is not whether it is a marcrtaxi if it doesn't have a
passenger, or if it isn't currently driven, or if there is no fare being
charged. The question is whether it is a marcrtaxi if it NEVER has those
things all at one time. I think that a marcrtaxi must have at some time a
driver and passenger(s). If there is no fare, then the word encompasses
both taxi and chauffeur, which sounds more like something we would expect
of a lujvo than a fu'ivla. A word specific to the English concept of taxi
probably needs a fare/payment place.
Step 3.
Get rid of any remaining candidates that could easily be expressed by
other means and that don't follow established patterns among the place
structures of other brivla. This avoids making the place structure
unnecessarily hard to learn.
Other than that caveat, I second Cowan's approval of this description.
--
lojbab lojbab@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org