Re: [lojban] Re: Direction of Rotation

[selpa'i <seladwa@gmx.de>]

Am 24.08.2012 20:27, schrieb Jonathan Jones:

On Fri, Aug 24, 2012 at 6:03 AM, la .lindar. <lindarthebard@gmail.com> wrote:

On Friday, 24 August 2012 04:25:56 UTC-7, selpa'i wrote:

I argue that no new gismu are needed and that {carna} can be used as is.

Oh..... kay....

 

I wrote a description of how I use carna, with a picture as an attachment.
I hope it explains my point of view (no pun intended) well enough.
Open the picture before reading this or it will be impossible to follow.

Yeah, even if I wasn't drunk posting I couldn't understand that huge body of text. If using a basic word requires collegiate or university level maths/physics then I'll drop every fucking account right now and go learn Volapuk just to spite all of you. If you can't phrase it so a drunk / child can understand it, your idea is bad and you should feel bad. zo'o

While I am in agreement with Lindar on this ^ point, it doesn't really matter, because while you (selpa'i) may have indeed developed a means of describing rotational motion from within the confines of the current definition of carna, you completely overlook the fact that carna is sometimes used to mean "x1 turns to x3", which is a different kind of rotating, and is the REASON we need at least one new word.

It's not a different kind of rotating. You still rotate around some axis in some direction. In "x1 turns to x3", x3 is the direction, and the rotation stops once x1 faces x3. It's still an event of carna, which was my point.

From my quick glance through the corpus, in fact, carna is used to mean that as much as 2 out of 3 times. Since any change to the language needs to have minimum (and preferably no) impact on past usage [...].

It breaks no usage. As explained above, there is no difference between rotating and turning that would require a seperate gismu.

So, selpa'i, can you translate "Gerald turned to the North and waved." for us, using carna?

(1) la. gerald. cu carna fi lo berti gi'e xance desku rinsa

Implicitly says that Gerald stops once he faces north. This is obvious enough for normal contexts. When in doubt, you can specify the final orientation through other means, for instance:

(2a) la. gerald. cu carna co'u lo nu se farna lo berti
    "Gerald turns until he faces north."

And possibly

(2b) la. gerald. cu carna co'u fa'a lo berti

Again, (2a) and (2b) are only necessary when (1) would cause confusion, which is rare.

I would also like to mention that you can often just use {farna} by itself, especially since the rotation isn't what matters, it's the change of facing that matters. (Often, not always.)

(3) la. gerald. cu binxo lo ka se farna lo berti kei gi'e xance desku rinsa
    "Gerald becomes facing towards north and waves."

I see no problem with any of these sentences. If you need to clearly talk about full rotations, there are also means for that, like for example {carlai}, which xorxes proposed, but which nobody cared to acknowledge.
I think it is clear that nothing of this breaks any usage and is, as far as I can tell, what {carna} has always meant.

mu'o mi'e la selpa'i

-- 
pilno zo le xu .i lo dei bangu cu se cmene zo lojbo .e nai zo lejbo

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