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).
And, of course, what the current logic suggests is that {la} works like {zo} to convert a word into a name, not of the word itself but of something else, not naturally, but by convention. That is, in {la tsani}, {tsani} is not a brivla but just a string of letters/sounds which, the {la} says, are being used as a name for someone/thing. {la tsani be zo'e} marks {tsani be zo'e} as a longer string of the same purpose, quite unrelated to the previous, except for starting out the same way; but certainly not necessarily referring to the same thing.
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.
How not? cmevla certainly do that. Or is your point that they are not taken as a string of symbols, but rather as a *word*. But, on the other hand, the {tsani} in {zo tsani} is taken as a word as well (it has to be proper Lojban, after all) and as a name for itself. So, I don't see the distinction as applying here.
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.
Second! {la} deracinates {tsani}, so that it has historic, but not linguistic, connections with its brivla existence.
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" %^)
That seems a bit narrow of you, though I think that it would be an unwise name choice. Once we get away from cmevla proper (where {la} is not technically necessary), just what can count as a name is not very clear. So far we have, I think, limited to brivla
and possibly bridi tails of various sorts and certainly have talked about full bridi ("His enemies fear even his horses", the sentence behind the abbreviated "Afraid-of-horses"). So farm cmavo and miscellaneous strings that are of no part of speech have been avoided (or at least frowned upon). The new understanding of {la} would technically open the path to all that, but custom is sure to intervene and prevent the worst of it, I hope.
-- Bob LeChevalier
lojbab@lojban.org www.lojban.orgPresident and Founder, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
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