Subject: Re: gismu list problems (was Re: [lojban] Digest Number 497)

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 11:46:40 -0400

At 07:47 AM 06/30/2000 -0700, michael helsem wrote:
> >From: Elrond <[email-masked]>
> li'o
> >I have thought many times I should note every such "mistake" I find
> >
>
>zo mufsre nordra (Not "mistake", exactly.) .iku'i mi facki lenu
>so'ole se gismu valsi pamei cu tcica milxe (But some of the gismu keywords
>do seem a bit misleading.) .i di'e mibypre nalmulno liste (This is my
>incomplete list.) .itu'e mezoi gy.

The choice of gismu keywords had many criteria, and being misleading was 
not always the highest.

1. No duplicates allowed.

2. Preference given for the word used in making the gismu, even if the 
place structure might make this word clumsy (or appropriate to one of the 
non x1 places - see dunku, cnemu below). In some cases, I believe the 
x1/x2 switch took place after the list of keywords was established.

3. Many English words have meaning as both nouns and verbs or other 
polysemy, and we tried to be careful with these, especially when they might 
give very misleading ideas of the meaning - see cinmo below: I associate 
"feel" with the sense of touch more than with emotions

4. Brevity - the keywords were created for LogFlash, and people using 
Logflash have to type them many times, the passive "is ---ed" adds 4 
characters and little information other than the place structure order. In 
some cases, when the keyword approached the 20 character maximum, 4 
unnecessary characters would be too much.

>CFARI 'initiate', better 'commences'
>CINMO 'emotion', better 'feels'
>CNEMU 'reward', better 'awards'
>CORTU 'pain', better 'hurts' or 'suffers'
>DANRE 'pressure', better 'presses'
>DUNKU 'anguish', better 'is anguished'
>JGIRA 'pride', better 'is proud'
>MIPRI 'secret', better 'conceals'
>SENVA 'dream', better 'dreamer'
>SISTI 'cease', better 'halts'
>SLABU 'old', better 'familiar'
>VOFLI 'flight', better 'flies'

Of course, among these, slabu has actually evolved in meaning. At the time 
the list was made, we believed that we could reconcile "familiar" and 
"not-young" in a single concept using the specified place structure and 
appropriate sumti. People have chosen to prefer to'ercitno for not-young 
such that it has largely evolved out of the semantic range for slabu, 
except possibly as a poetic metaphor.

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