Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: word for "www" (was: Archive location.)

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2002 16:29:12 EDT

In a message dated 9/10/2002 1:43:16 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

<<
> This was discussing balcukta, not ralcku. I daresay the same ideas hold
> across the pair. According to you, this lujvo is far beyond the bounds of
> reason, but according to "tradition", it hardly is.
> >>

Yes, {ralcukta} is better than {bal--}, though, after going through tis 
discussion, {bal--} is looking better.

<<
However, I think the question of what a cukta is and is not, and whether a
webpage/website/whole web qualifies as one, is more interesting and more
specifically germane than the general issue of acceptable lujvo, which in
any case is overridden by usage, making the general trends irrelevant for
any specific case.
I think I agree, even at the risk of turning a moderately creative lujvo into 
a more nearly literal one. Hey, does the fact that the Web is made up of 
"pages" count for anything?

Robin:
<<
I don't particularily find 'tradition' relevant in this case, but can I
get some examples?
Well, I would assume that accepted lujvo must have some relevance to any test 
being proposed for good lujvo. If most did not pass, then the test is 
suspect at least. As for examples, that is rather hard, since it seems that 
we each have a store of accepted lujvo and there is no generally agreed upon 
set. I'll dredge up a few from my memory if you want, though at least some 
of them may go back to Loglan (I tend to see the enterprise here as a 
continuous one, not one that started in 1984 or when some particular move was 
made).

<<
OK. I don't have any serious arguments that the web qualifies as a
cukta. I still think ralcku is a bad lujvo. If you're not interested
in stating your opinion on whether a lujvo needs to be meaningful or
not, then I guess I can't force you to do so, but I would like to point
out that you know where to find English.
Wow! Nice move! Ignoratio elenchi, of course, but smoothly done. Of course 
lujvo have to be meaningful; they are words in a language after all. What 
you mean (not) to say is that the meaning of a compound word has to be wholly 
or almost recoverable from the meanings of its components in isolation. The 
unqualified Lojban answer is "No," even if it rejects metaphors. The fact is 
that tanru, which underlie lujvo, are ambiguous big time. From all of those 
possible meanings, a lujvo picks exactly one and there is nothing in the 
components to say which one it is; that is the free act of a creator. On the 
basis of the lujvo, we can reconstruct the tanru and from that get some 
notion (almost certainly incomplete) of the sorts of things the whole might 
mean and we can, with a little contextual help, perhaps get that range down 
quite a bit. But to hit the right one -- without a lot of context -- is 
largely chance and certainly is not a part of what is needed for a good (or 
even a boring) lujvo.