Subject: Re: [lojban] Gismu Thesaurus

From: Robert LeChevalier <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 08 Aug 2002 19:14:28 -0400

At 05:11 PM 8/8/02 -0400, Pierre Abbat wrote:
>I think we need a general brivla thesaurus. Can we make one with the
>dictionary database? We should be able to say that {selratni} and {cmuxu'i}
>and {xu'icmu} all can be said of chemical elements but the place structures
>are different, or that ro kurbita cu guzme but not the reverse.

We first need to have a set of agreed upon place structures for the 
lujvo. And so far there has been little work at devising place structures 
for any lujvo, nor for verifying the place structures of the lujvo that 
have been structured.

I haven't looked at xod's effort, but there is a lot more work needed in 
the gismu thesaurus, merely in thesaurusizing the oblique places.

The oblique places was why we abandoned the Roget's scheme, BTW - it really 
doesn't work for multiplace gismu. You could thesaurusize based on the 
individual places (which are nounish) of each gismu, but Roget's includes 
categories that are nounish, verbish, and adjectivish all mixed together, 
and gismu themselves don't work well as verbs or adjectives without the 
place-limiting use of converters (i.e. the Roget's category for xe klama 
would likely not be the same as for klama). We really need a new concept 
of how to break down the gismu (or brivla) - either that or risk the 
malropno equation of a gismu to the sum of its individual places.

lojbab

-- 
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org