I guess the first question we need to ask is "should lojban even have words that have more than one scope?" Assuming the answer is yes, then since the structure is the same regardless of the exact definition, I would just put it once, and then the three definitions. Incidentally, thatnks for teaching me about "Crown groups". I had never heard of that before. (But then, back when I learned biology there were only two groups of animals: "Things you can eat" and "Things that will eat you".)
--gejyspa
On Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 4:59 PM, Pierre Abbat
<phma@phma.optus.nu> wrote:
Let's say you have a word that takes more than one sentence to define. This
could be because one sentence does not approximate precisely enough the
meaning of the word, or because the word has different meanings in different
contexts or as used by different people. I'll take "mammal" for example.
1. A vertebrate which has hair and, as an infant, feeds on milk produced by
skin glands.
2. A vertebrate with one bone in the jaw and three in each inner ear.
3. A descendant of the last common ancestor of a human, a kangaroo, and a
platypus.
All three definitions (assuming no mammal species were created along the way)
define the same set of extant animals. The second is used by paleontologists,
who have no way of telling whether an animal found as a fossil had milk
glands, and the third is a cladistic definition. All crown-group mammals (the
third definition) also satisfy the second definition, but some animals
satisfy the second definition but not the third.
Now suppose you want to write a definition of "mabru" that has these three
senses. Do you write the place structure once and then the three senses, or
do you write the place structure in each sense? (The Lojban for the last two
animals is "kanguru" and "ornitorinku".)
Pierre
--
lo ponse be lo mruli po'o cu ga'ezga roda lo ka dinko
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