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Re: [lojban] {ciftoldi}. caterpillar is not a cifnu

  And yet turtles and snakes and fish just out of the egg can fend for themselves.  Are you saying the are not babies?  The definition of baby in English is:

: a very young child

: a very young animal

  (source m-w.com) 

  All these case qualify.  I don't believe cifnu is that much different. Words in brackets in the gismu list are rarely probative, and they explanatory or expanding, rather than limiting, the definition. (Or are you suggesting that "flira" means the same as "stedu" because it says "head" in brackets? 

                --gejyspa

On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 2:15 PM, Gleki Arxokuna <gleki.is.my.name@gmail.com> wrote:


2015-05-29 19:21 GMT+03:00 Michael Turniansky <mturniansky@gmail.com>:
  Sorry, gotta disagree with you here.  Ask a four-year-old what a baby butterfly is and they'll tell ya - "caterpillar!" (and, ya know, pretty much any non-entolomogist over the age of four, too)

okay, but {lo cifnu} doesn't mean "baby". It denotes a "helpless" baby.


In what way are they helpless?  They eat themselves whereas in cangaroos they can only get to the dug.



  Now, if you want to suggest that a toldi has two different cifnu forms, I won't disagree... lo toldi cu  farvi lo  ma'urtoldi lo ciftoldi lo todvelfarvi


              --gejyspa


On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 5:14 AM, la gleki <gleki.is.my.name@gmail.com> wrote:
The only mentioning of the concept of "larva" in JVS is this word:

{ciftoldi} = "x1 is a caterpillar (larva of butterfly or moth - not sawfly) of species x2."
However, {cifnu} = "x1 is an infant/baby [helpless through youth/incomplete development] of species x2."

I think (although it is supposed to be a naljvajvo or even a cimjvo) a semantic shift of the concept of {cifnu} since caterpillar is no more helpless than imago.

Compare stages:
With metamorphosis, e.g. butterflies:
1. sperm/ovum
2. egg
3. laid egg
4. larva
5. imago
Cangaroos:
1. sperm/ovum
2. egg
3. newborn (helpless)
slowly turning into
4. adult
Humans:
1. sperm/ovum
2. egg
3. newborn (helpless)
slowly turning into
4. adult
Tardigrades:
1. sperm/ovum
2. laid egg => fertilisation
3. newborn (full complement of adult cells)
slowly growing (via the size of cells, not their number) into
4. adult

So although {cifnu} probably can be applied to humans and cangaroos I can't see such a stage for butterflies and tardigrades. Thus, I think that such anthropomorphism in applying {cif-} rafsi to larva stage should be avoided and probably separate brivla should be used instead.

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