Subject: [lojban] Re: [cowan: Re: Defining lujvo]

From: "robin.bcc" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2003 20:45:05 -0400

Jim Carter wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Apr 2003, John Cowan wrote:
> 
>>This definitely won't work for Loglan/Lojban. For example, in Lojban
>>it is possible to create two lujvo with the place structures "x1 has
>>a heart" and "x1 has a kidney", and these are distinct predicates.
>>In Gua\spi, however, they are the same predicate.
> 
> 
> Not to contradict your conclusion that the -gua\spi definition won't work
> for (every predicate in) Lojban, but isn't it "x1 is be-kidneyed by x2"?
> Presumably, the sets of hearts and kidneys would only overlap a little,
> unless we're defining a formerly unrecognized synonym, so the referent sets
> would be distinct in this case.

"risna" is defined as x1 is a/the heart of x2 (I couldn't find a gismu 
for "kidney"). "To have a heart" might be "selrisna". Consequently "la 
djan. selrisna" seems to imply "la djan. ponse lo risna" (except that 
the latter could mean that he could have someone else's heart in a jar 
on his mantelpiece). I suppose if you really wanted to make a tanru for 
"has a heart AND a kidney", "has a heart OR kidney" or even has "some 
kind of organ which combines the attributes of a heart and a kidney", on 
it would be possible, but I don't think you could lujvo-ise it because 
of the logical connectors.

robin.tr

-- 
"A Perl script is "correct" if it gets the job done before your boss 
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- Larry Wall

Robin Turner
IDMYO
Bilkent Univeritesi
Ankara 06533
Turkey

www.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin