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Re: [lojban] cmevla as a class of brivla
selpa'i wrote:
la .lojbab. cu cusku di'e
selpa'i wrote:
la .lojbab. cu cusku di'e
What semantic distinctions arise from identifying
something as a name as opposed to a normal description, I am not sure
(but it would surely encompass the relevant place structures).
But {la} doesn't describe. It names. I don't describe Jacob Errington as
a sky when I call him by la tsani, and neither does he describe himself
as a sky by giving himself that name. It's merely a label used to refer
to this individual, nothing more.
But "tsani" itself is grammatically a brivla, and implicit
(grammatically) in "la tsani" is "la tsani be ...". The places are
inseparable from the brivla. That is fundamental to the language.
I agree that places are inseperable from a brivla in that the places are
what the brivla means.
I wasn't talking about meaning, actually. I was talking about grammar.
A brivla automatically invokes grammatically the attachment of places
(except when quoted with zo, or used as a delimiter in a zoi quote).
Those exceptions are in fact significant - they are examples of the
brivla (or whatever word) being taken as a string of symbols/sounds that
exists on it own regardless of which word or kind of word that it is.
It would seem that you want names to be another example of a string of
symbols taken as such a standalone language unit.
But that isn't the case for Lojban.
All the places together determine the meaning,
and usually, if one or more places aren't present, the meaning of the
brivla is different. When I use {tsani}, I must be aware that it relates
a sky to the place it's a sky of. *That* is fundamental to the language.
However, you seem to be saying that {la tsani} and {la tsani be zo'e} or
{la tsani be da} are all people that share the exact same name.
I am not saying anything of the sort. It might or might not be true,
just as names might refer to the same person while having nothing to do
with each other ("Robert LeChevalier", "lojbab", "Papa", "asshole" are
all names that have been used to refer to the same person). But there
also might be multiple referents for the name "la tsani" as well, just
as there are multiple persons named "Robert LeChevalier" in the world
(not many, but they exist).
I am saying that as far as Lojban is concerned "{la tsani} and {la tsani
be zo'e}" are linguistically equivalent, and there is no way to say "la
tsani" such that it DOESN'T include a possible value in the unspecified
places; they are there and they are "zo'e", if nothing else.
And this is where I disagree.
If I decided to call you "George" you would still be the same person.
Likewise if I were to call you "la tsani be zo'e". Furthermore, your
preference has little to do with it. It was defined to be POLITE to
privilege the name preferred by the one being named (or by the
culture/language of which the named is most closely associated). But
that isn't part if the language definition, but rather a cultural
convention.
And dotside or no dotside, I will never accept someone's choice of name
to be "la" %^)
--
Bob LeChevalier lojbab@lojban.org www.lojban.org
President and Founder, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
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