[lojban] Re: The global problem of mirror paired predicates

[iesk <pa.fae@gmx.de>]

Le vendredi 10 août 2012 12:08:17 UTC+2, Gleki Arxokuna a écrit :

There are several pairs of predicates that can be expressed in a different way.

1. left - right

2. south - north

3. east - west

4. female - male

5. white - black

6. expensive - cheap

7. healthy - ill

8. good - bad

Some conlangs like Esperanto have only one root for each pair and use prefixes (e.g. "anti-") to express the second member of the set.

So 

left = anti-right

ill =  anti-healthy

or

patro - father

patrino - mother (suffix -in- for females)

I don’t think Esperanto scholars or speakers would consider patro—patrino a scale. Esperanto just lacks a +MASCULIN suffix (thus, it is a feminist language q.e.d. – just kidding), and *usage decides* that some roots are inherently male, most of the time, and some are not.


 

Ithkuil employs a different approach. It uses two affixes, something like "plus" and "minus" to determine where on the scale we are present.

so e.g. we have a root for "good/bad" (let it be ROOT1) and for  "left-right" (let it be ROOT2) and mark them with prefixes.

good = plus-ROOT1

bad = minus-ROOT2

right = plus-ROOT1

left = minus-ROOT2

If such policy applied in Lojbanistan left-handed people would definitely leave the community as "minus" prefix is associated both with "bad" and "left hand".

That is a bold prediction. I guess the author of Ithkuil who put those scales on paper writes from left to right and is an optimist. ;) I don’t know much about Ithkuil, though.
 

Somehow we must choose what is positive and what is negative.

Therefore I state that

AFFIX POLICY FOR SCALE PREDICATE IN ESPERANTO AND ITHKUIL IS NOT CULTURALLY NEUTRAL.

The only way to be culturally neutral is the policy of many natural languages, i.e. having two separate words for each member of the pair.

In Lojban we have {zunle - pritu}, {bemro - snanu} etc.

Note that even in Esperanto separate root appeared for cheap instead of just "anti-expensive" which proves that such policy is naturalistic.

Note how little use is made of most of those ersatz words in actual usage.
 

(This message appeared after discussing "clockwise" and "counterclockwise" concepts in a separate topic that in my opinion also deserve separate words).

Other solutions are culturally non-neutral.

Almost every person belongs  to some social minority: left-handed minority, sexual minorities, ethnic minorities. But together they constitute MAJORITY of the population.

In other words only the current policy of Lojban is best.

Yes, two separate words instead of one+affix is the cost of such neutrality.

(If you wanna be non-neutral please use {tolpritu} instead of {zunle}, it's absolutely not a problem).

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