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



nitcu tese sidju nunrenvi

Because Zipf: tcudjure'i

On Sun, May 31, 2015 at 12:02 AM, Gleki Arxokuna <gleki.is.my.name@gmail.com> wrote:


2015-05-30 23:05 GMT+03:00 Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG <lojbab@lojban.org>:
On 5/29/2015 2:15 PM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:
okay, but {lo cifnu} doesn't mean "baby". It denotes a "helpless" baby.

No.  It means baby.  The "helpless" was my biologically-naive perception that the semantic difference between a "baby" and a "child" is relative helplessness.

infant  = A very young human being, from birth to somewhere between six months and two years of age, needing almost constant care and/or attention
 
  I can't tell you at what age/stage a "baby" ceases to be a baby and becomes a "child" other than that helplessness of having to have someone change their diapers.  (And I wouldn't be surprised if different languages divide up human development differently than English does)

"infant" in humans is really helpless. Obviously, like for many concepts there isn't strict border when a human being stops being an infant.

Anyway, the question was about caterpillar. I think it's inappropriate to mix the three concepts of helplessness, immaturity and stage of development like larva/imago.

They mean different things and it will be helpful to clearly separate them when needed.

One more example are Aphids that are born pregnant with another Aphid pregnant too (thus three Aphids nested within each other). Thus they are born both as "babies" but as mature ones (always fill makcu2 / verba3 here?).

Now combine butterflies, Aphids, salamanders, humans, cangaroos and tardigrades. If we are supposed to correctly describe life cycles of all of them then new precise words (not tanru) are unavoidable.



That other animals don't wear diapers makes the analogy imperfect for non-humans.  But Lojban words aren't really intended to solve the human tendency to metaphorize concepts that don't strictly fit.  And tanru are most definitely include metaphors (as do gismu in some cases).

Biological reality isn't especially relevant, unless Lojban is to be limited only to those who know biology in sufficient depth.

This already happened although of course one can assert that no one knows it sufficiently.
 
  And by the time we have some non-human species speaking Lojban, no doubt the extraterrestrial biology will overturn most of our biological concepts, so claiming that Lojban is malremna doesn't convince me.

le jbocifnu pe la camgusmis almost certainly wouldn't understand the biological distinctions being argued. I thus agree with Michael.  If the word "helpless" isn't optimal, find some other wording.

A brivla meaning  "x1 is a live being helpless by standard x2" is needed.

  The gismu places structures were limited by character count, so I often used a single word that wasn't necessarily a precise definition.

lojbab


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mu'o mi'e .aionys.

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