Re: [lojban] request for a new gismu: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episodic_memory

[Ian Johnson <blindbravado@gmail.com>]

 Until we know more about how the brain does memory, it seems presumptuous to claim that these are different "concepts" as opposed to different memories.

As gleki has pointed out, there is significant evidence that the two actually are different. Also, although it is a small sample, at the time of coming up with this idea several of us (tsani, gleki, and I, possibly others) all realized that our ways of interacting with these types of memories were significantly different, and that this seemed to be responsible for several experiences with memory. For example, I remarked that I remember certain concepts in mathematics in a way more similar to how I remember experiences than to how I remember other facts, and that these memories are inevitably more permanent and vivid than their counterparts. gleki remarked that he had a brief epiphany of the importance of this concept before quickly losing it to the lack of a word for it in his native language.

> morji is NOT restricted to du'u.  The parenthetical use in the gismu list is NOT a restriction (and indeed there aren't really ANY restrictions so long as it is grammatical - the semantics of lojban has not been formally defined).

You may say that, but this type analysis is part of the way that the language, as I've seen it in the last few years, has evolved. Evolved restriction is not new to natlangs, why should it be new to conlangs?

One can claim, I think somewhat arbitrarily), that memorizing a quote is a different sort of memory than a fact or an episode.  If so, one might make lujvo based on morji to distinguish the presumably different memory types of facts, quotes, and episodes, and define the place structure of the lujvo specific to your more restricted meaning.

(I think I should note that such specialized and restricted-meaning lujvo are a type that is not necessarily achievable using jvajvo rules, because we didn't really build the tools for semantic-rules-based lujvo-making into the language - the concept of having rules to determine place structures was an afterthought regularization devised by Nick Nicolas as a result of his analysis of patterns of how people actually were making lujvo).

It's been stated already that the problem with going about this way is that the lujvo that you would want to use for this concept have useful jvajvo meanings which are distinct from this concept. "Remembering something about an experience" and "remembering an experience" are both useful ideas which should have separate terms.

mi'e la latro'a mu'o

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