[lojban] Re: LA/LO/LE: Three Perspectives on Language

["Brett Williams" <mungojelly@gmail.com>]

On 9/1/08, Roman Naumann <eldrikdo@gmail.com> wrote:

Your boxes explanation for lo/le seems handy to me.
LA being but a sound-thing connective, however, confuses
me as until now I assumed {la cribe} for instance would (in translation)
be the one 'named bear', not the one 'named cribe'.
(l4b stated that IIRC)

When using a word of Lojban as a name, there is perhaps some connection to the meaning, or at least to the word.  That is, the word "cribe" is still the word "cribe" when it's naming something, and continues to remind us all of a bear. 

OTOH, the word "cribe", which in its LO usage is restricted to labelling bears, when used with LA can be used as a label for absolutely anything you want.  I can name my stomach "cribe" and then say that after I write this post I'm going to put some breakfast in "la cribe", and/or I can call you "cribe" and say that I'm writing an answer to a question posed by "la cribe", and/or I can name the very idea of naming everything "cribe" itself "cribe" and say that I'm writing to "la cribe" about  "la cribe" before putting some cereal in "la cribe".  I don't have to only name bear-like things "cribe", or only name one thing "cribe" at a time, etc.-- I can just use this label "cribe", and even though its mundane purpose is to label bears, I'm free to use it to label anything, as long as I spin myself the right amount of slack by saying "la" instead of "lo".  

mu'o mi'e la se ckiku