Hi. This e-mail is a bit of an essay. It is about names and “name
words”. It is a long essay because I want to make sure it gets
understood no matter what. I write this in English because it is also
aimed at newbies.
Many of you may already have heard of the word “cmevla”. However, I
have noticed that some of you still haven’t grasped the meaning of it
and under what motivation some people, including me, use it. So I write
this essay to help you understand and I think the distinction of
“cmene” vs. “cmevla” is quite important.
Let’s start with “cmene”.
Here’s the definition of “cmene”: “x1 (quoted word(s)) is a/the
name/title/tag of x2 to/used-by namer/name-user x3 (person)”
So as I understand this definition, x1 can only fit into the predicate
word “cmene” if the quoted word(s) are actually the name of something.
“zo trolololololololololol cmene” may be false, iff there is actually
nothing with this strange name.
But most important, “cmene” is all about the name of something. It does
*not* make an assertion about morphology.
Consider these lojbanic statements:
* “zo lojban cmene la lojban”
* “zo gleki cmene la gleki”
* “lu donald dak li'u cmene la donald dak
These should be obviously true, but of course only if there are
actually things called “lojban”, “gleki” or “donald dak”. For our
purposes, I assume that this is the case. The translation is always
something along the lines of “‘Foobar’ is the name of
Foobar.” (carefully look at the quotes).
But now consider this statement:
* “lu donald gustav li'u cmene la donald gustav li'u”
Now let’s pretend there is actually nothing in the universe called
“donald gustav”. Then it is false. Yet “donald gustav” shares something
with “donald dak”: The word “donald”. It is interesting because it is
unlike words like “gismu”, “cidjrpitsa”, “gerzda”.
Which leads us to the so-called “name words”, the “cmevla”.
The current definition of “cmevla” is “x1 is a morphologically defined
name word meaning x2 in language x3.”. The notes say: “In Lojban, such
words are characterized by ending with a consonant. In Lojban, a cmevla
may only consist of a single word, whereas a cmene can consist of one
or multiple words, which may be cmevla. See also vlaturge'a.”
Source: <http://jbovlaste.lojban.org/dict/cmevla>
I think the current definition is really unlucky and probably hard to
understand. But luckily, the notes clear it up a bit. I think I grasped
it. But still, it should be probably reworded (=same meaning in
different words).
As I understand it, a cmevla is all about morphology. It it detached
from the concept of “name”. In Lojban, a cmevla is a special kind of
word which ends in a consonant. But that is just one property of a
clevla. In fact, cmevla make their own word class (or “part-of-speech”
if you insist), along with gismu, lujvo, fu'ivla and cmavo. The CLL
chapter defines word classes in the morphology chapter, in the section
“cmene” (I come to that title later). If you read the section
carefully, it becomes clear that it talks about morphology most of the
time. If we use the CLL definition of “cmene” in that chapter for
“cmene”, then this is true:
* “zo djim cmevla”
* “zo djein cmevla”
* “zo arnold cmevla”
But these aren’t:
* “lu donald dak li'u cmevla” (false, it is not a single word)
* “zo gleki cmevla” (Wrong word class. The word “gleki” belongs to the
word class “gismu”)
To say “zo gleki cmene” is correct, but it just means “‘gleki’ is a
name.”, but we wanted to say something else.
In short, a cmevla is a single word which falls under the rules of the
“cmene” chapter of the CLL. All brivla are not cmevla. Multiple words
(like “donald dak”) are no cmevla (but “donald dak” may be a cmene).
I am pretty sure that the CLL uses the word “cmene” incorrectly. To
proof it, you have to see that the CLL distinguishes between these
basic word classes in Lojban:
* cmavo
* gismu
* lujvo
* fu'ivla
* cmene
Now let’s look if this holds true by inserting a word of the
corresponding word class into the x1:
* zo go cmavo
* zo mabru gismu
* zo gerzda lujvo
* zo cidjrpitsa fu'ivla
* zo pitr cmene
The first four ones should be acceptable without debate, the last one
is of interest here. Let’s see what the last one means by simply
inserting it in the definition of “cmene”:
“‘pitr’ is a name of someone, given by some name-giver.”
Or short:
“‘pitr’ is a name.”
It does not matter if this statement is actually true. But the problem
here is that this is not what we wanted to say. The CLL clearly talked
about a word class in the chapter called “cmene”.
Let’s try it again with “cmevla”:
* “zo pitr cmevla”
This simply means that “pitr” is a member of a word class we call
“cmevla”. Which *is* what we wanted to say.
When the CLL talks about a “cmene” is means actually a “cmevla” in most
of the cases. I think the reason why the CLL calls it “cmene” anyways
is simply that the word “cmevla” didn’t exist when the CLL was written
and the authors were not really aware of the distinction. Also, there
is no real English translation for the concept behind “cmevla”. I could
say “name word”, but this lexeme would be created ad hoc and is alien
to most English-speaking people. Which may also be the reason why the
wording in the current definition on Jbovlaste is kinda tricky at the
moment. I would be very glad if someone could suggest a better wording
(without changing the meaning, of course!). Someone also suggested to
change the word class “cmene” to “cmevla” in Jbovlaste:
<https://github.com/lojban/jbovlaste/issues/59>
To summarize: Say “cmevla” when you are talking about a word class, but
use “cmene” if you are talking about an actual name of something or
someone. If you talk about names, you may say this: “zo gleki cmene
.ije zo selpa'i cmene
.ije zo uuZIT cmene”
But if you talk about word classes, you may say this:
“zo gleki gismu
.ije zo selpa'i lujvo
.ije zo uuZIT cmevla”
But NOT this:
“zo gleki gismu
.ije zo selpa'i lujvo
.ije zo uuZIT cmene”
The last sentence is not false, but it is not what you wanted to say!
So I hope you all understood this now. If you did, fine. If you didn’t,
write a follow-up and tell me what you did not understand.
--
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