From jjllambias@hotmail.com Mon Jul 10 17:37:35 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 11125 invoked from network); 11 Jul 2000 00:37:35 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by m4.onelist.org with QMQP; 11 Jul 2000 00:37:35 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO hotmail.com) (216.33.240.143) by mta1 with SMTP; 11 Jul 2000 00:37:35 -0000 Received: (qmail 2475 invoked by uid 0); 11 Jul 2000 00:37:35 -0000 Message-ID: <20000711003735.2474.qmail@hotmail.com> Received: from 200.42.154.98 by www.hotmail.com with HTTP; Mon, 10 Jul 2000 17:37:35 PDT X-Originating-IP: [200.42.154.98] To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: zi'o & otpi Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2000 17:37:35 PDT Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed From: "Jorge Llambias" la rafael cusku di'e >(Honestly, I feel that lojban here is constraining the way I'm thinking -- >it seemed obvious to me to be able to think about a "girzu be fi zi'o", >even a "se gerku be zi'o", and all I'm hearing for several days now just >states that it "cannot"... I just am more and more agreeing with the SWH!) But Lojban is not constraining you. It is just that maybe {girzu} is not the best word to express the particular relationship that you are thinking of. For example, would you say that {lanme} constrains you from considering {lanme be zi'o}? Some place structures are just not defined for the concepts that we want to use them for. We can either find other words to fit the concept, like {anme}, or redefine the word to fit the concept (not so easy in most cases). >But let's go slightly offtopic. >Actually, I am beginning to think that the whole issue is not about >the ability of describing such or such concept, but about the way >(western) people think and use description words to designate/name >*objects*, rather than *relationships* (as does, apparently, lojban). This certainly has a lot to do with it. I don't know if this is a particularity of Westerners, but in any case Lojban does place more emphasis on the relationships and we very easily forget about it. We are used to the subject-predicate structure, and Lojban is more like many different subjects at the same time with one predicate. >If using "zi'o" for x1 in a construct leads to obviously paradoxical >meanings, or simply to concepts that are strictly logically nonsense, then >it should mean that the very place structure itself is flawed, and not >that the language user "should not" build such constructs. Actually, my take tends to be the opposite. If using zi'o on a place makes eminent sense, this is a good sign that the place structure was too complicated to begin with and a simpler place structure should have been preferred. But that's just my impatience with difficult to learn place structures. co'o mi'e xorxes ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com