Re: [lojban] Re: Question about apparent inconsistency with "nixli".

[Luke Bergen <lukeabergen@gmail.com>]

There's a whole lot of overlap in the gismu.  Why need black if you can just say {tolblabi}?

I seem to remember hearing at one point that the gismu were selected based on how useful the idea is to have, and not necessarily to get the best coverage of semantic space.  We have like 4 words for "say" that all have subtle distinctions in their meanings, but there is no gismu for cactus.  The choice in what concepts should be gismu was selected based on how often it'd be used, not how well it covers the semantic space.  Which is why it always confused the hell out of me that there wasn't originally a gismu for "old".

On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 11:27 AM, najrut <ruler11post@gmail.com> wrote:

It would be impossible to create absolute symmetry in root words.
That's the way modern Esperanto tries to work (doktorino means female
doctor and doktoric^o means male doctor, but in numerous other cases
Esperanto is not logical at all).
But I think it's possible to eliminate nixli and nanla at all.
Aren't "fetyve'a" (fetsi zei verba) and "nakyve'a" (nakni zei verba)
synonyms of those words ?

Then there can be a simple table.

fetyve'a    = nixli       = girl
nakyve'a  = nakla     = boy
fetytunba = mensi    = sister
naktunba = bruna    = brother
fetre'a      = ninmu   = woman
nakre'a    = nanmu  = man

Quite easy to remember, isn't it ?

On Nov 30, 3:18 pm, Pan Mistwood <panmistw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Back when I first dove into learning Lojban, I noticed an apparent
> inconsistency with four gismu. And as far as I can tell, there's no
> reason for it, but I could be mistaken. So, after much
> procrastination, I'm asking about it here. (And as far as I could find
> with Google Web search and a search within this group, it hasn't been
> brought up before, which is rather surprising to me.)
>
> The gismu "nanmu" virtually means the English "man" or, more
> generally, "male humanoid". The gismu "ninmu" virtually means the
> English "woman" or "female humanoid". The gismu "nanla" virtually
> means the English "boy". Now, I understand that they are not preferred
> over the gismu "verba", "remna", and "prenu", but they do exist and
> are recognised as Lojbanic gismu.
>
> From those gismu, I can see a pattern. "nanmu" and "nanla" share "na-"
> while "nanla" and "nanmu" share "-mu". Following this pattern, the
> gismu virtually meaning the English "girl" would be "ninla"; "ni-" as
> in "ninmu" and "-la" as in "nanla". However, the gismu is actually
> "nixli". My question: as "ninla" is valid gismu syntax, is consistent
> with "nanmu", "nanla", and "ninmu", and is not already used to mean
> something else, why is "nixli" used instead?

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