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

For some scales, the polarity is not an arbitrary choice but an intrinsic corollary of the nature of the scale. E.g. long is positive, short is negative, and you can see this from comparing "It's long on length" (= it's long) and "it's short on shortness" (= long), i.e. two negatives make a positive. And the positive has much length and the negative little. Where the scale is itself negative, as with near:far, the amount of being away from (not at) something, the negative member is the one with more of the negative property, so near is pos and far is neg: "it's near to being near" vs "it's far from being far" (= it's near).

A language ought to reflect this sort of logical patterning in predicates.

For your 8 examples

1. left - right


no polarity


2. south - north


no polarity


3. east - west


no polarity


4. female - male


no polarity. But if female:male is understood as concave:convex (as in terminology of cable connectors), male is pos and female is neg.


5. white - black


clearly it can have polarity, but it depends on whether the scale is defined as degree of whiteness or degree of blackness; either way, grey is in the middle


6. expensive - cheap


you'd expect expensive to be pos, but I can't think of a double neg example to prove this


7. healthy - ill


healthy pos, ill neg, tho I can't think of probative example


8. good - bad


"bad at being bad at it" (= good at) proves that "bad" is neg in at least this sense

--And.


Gleki Arxokuna, On 10/08/2012 11:08:

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)

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".
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.

(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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