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

From: Robin Lee Powell <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2002 15:01:21 -0700

On Tue, Sep 10, 2002 at 04:29:12PM -0400, [email-masked] wrote:
> In a message dated 9/10/2002 1:43:16 PM Central Daylight Time, 
> [email-masked] writes:
> 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. 

Given the limited history of actual conversational usage of lojban, I
don't agree. Come to the IRC channel some time, where actual
conversations occur in lojban in real time. You won't see many lujvo,
I'll tell you that right now.

> <<
> 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.

I'm repeating this simply because it's pretty well written. Starting
with the 5th sentence anyways.

I'm not sure I have a good answer to that, beyond the fact that I don't
see even a "blanu zdani" == "I had a dog that once got covered in blue
paint when I lived in that house" type of connection between "ralju
cukta" and "the world wide web".

I'll think about this more.

-Robin

-- 
http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ BTW, I'm male, honest.
le datni cu djica le nu zifre .iku'i .oi le so'e datni cu to'e te pilno
je xlali -- RLP http://www.lojban.org/