Re: [lojban] Re: How it should have been. And how it could be.

[Michael Turniansky <mturniansky@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 5:23 AM, Escape Landsome <escaaape@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> If the way to derive new words from old ones or from "semantic roots"
> is correct, there is no word or idea that cannot be created in a
> well-formed fashion.
>
> The worst thing that can happen is that there be many different
> new-words to convey "the same meaning".   But, even if this is to
> happen, we have the ability to coin some of these words into "a
> canonical translation", and thus, we create pragmatic layers of word
> usage.
>
   Well, if that's the worst thing that can happen, then we're in
trouble.  There are already words in lojban that are synonyms, and
others that are near-synonyms.  But I don't personally think that's a
bad thing for a living language.  Being able to choose the word that
suits you for aesthetic reasons doesn't necessarily imply there's even
the subtlest distinction between them.

> For instance, let's suppose we need a word for silence, and somebody
> (A) says silence is "deprivation-of-noise", thus, some lojban word,
> and someone else (B) says that silence is
> "permanence-of-steadinesse-and-calm", thus, some other word.
> Now, we would have to translate some well-known poems in which silence
> is either the word A or the word B...  And our choice, which would be
> justified for other (e.g. metric, or rhythmic) reasons, would then
> "establish" a differential usage, A vs. B...  And, this would in turn
> create a rather subtle distinction between the meaning A and the
> meaning B, based primarily upon the lojbanic meaning, and secondarily
> (in a less obvious way) based upon the pragmatic contribution of both
> words A and B in the context of the poems...
>
> So, this would not be different from defining logically the two words,
> but illustrate them with exeamples taken in some poems...

  (BTW, there are plenty of jbo.wikipedia.org articles, too)

>
               --gejyspa

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