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

[Michael Turniansky <mturniansky@gmail.com>]

 

On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 2:32 PM, Gleki Arxokuna <gleki.is.my.name@gmail.com> wrote:

2015-05-29 21:26 GMT+03:00 Michael Turniansky <mturniansky@gmail.com>:

  And yet turtles and snakes and fish just out of the egg can fend for themselves.  Are you saying the are not babies?

I'm saying they are not {cifnu}.

 

  The definition of baby in English

We are talking about Lojban, not English

 

is:

: a very young child

: a very young animal

sounds like {verba} 

  (source m-w.com) 

  All these case qualify.  I don't believe cifnu is that much different.

Please, read the definition once again.

 

Words in brackets in the gismu list are rarely probative, and they explanatory or expanding, rather than limiting, the definition.

Then {verba}/{cifnu} distinction becomes moot.

 

  No, it does not.  (putting aside for the moment the very salient fact that se verba/te verba and se cifnu parts are completely different, so just like terdi/plini and lunra/mluni are not synonyms, despite the fact that their x1s are pretty coterminus).  "an infant/baby" is different (or at the very least, a subset of) a "child/kid/juvenile".  ( Also, if you notice, verba specifies a "person" in those brackets that you love so much.  Are you suggesting a caterpillar is a person?  But I will be willing to extend it to other species (even though the only one in the series that allows to specify the species in the terbri is cifnu))  AFAIK, that distinction is made in almost every language.  But it is true, that in regards to many non-human species, you could use either the one or the other interchangeably, if you are only interested in x1 aspect.  (so, yes, I could use vertoldi rather than ciftoldi for "caterpillar", but it doesn't make the latter incorrect, as you have argued.)  Even in humans, can you tell me what day a given cifnu becomes a verba? What's your criteria.  I don't know of any.  What's the standard for helplessness?  When it can eat solid food? When it can walk?  When it can drive to the grocery store and pay with money from its own job?  Everything is a continuum.

           --gejyspa

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