From iad@MATH.BAS.BG Sun Dec 03 02:32:21 2000 Return-Path: X-Sender: iad@math.bas.bg X-Apparently-To: lojban@egroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-6_3_1_2); 3 Dec 2000 10:32:21 -0000 Received: (qmail 20899 invoked from network); 3 Dec 2000 10:32:21 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by l8.egroups.com with QMQP; 3 Dec 2000 10:32:21 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO lnd.internet-bg.net) (212.124.64.2) by mta2 with SMTP; 3 Dec 2000 10:32:19 -0000 Received: from math.bas.bg (ppp102.internet-bg.net [212.124.66.102]) by lnd.internet-bg.net (8.9.3/8.9.0) with ESMTP id MAA02898 for ; Sun, 3 Dec 2000 12:34:43 +0200 Message-ID: <3A2A18BB.9F4E5880@math.bas.bg> Date: Sun, 03 Dec 2000 11:56:11 +0200 X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.74 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] common words References: <00120221494908.11907@neofelis> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Ivan A Derzhanski Pierre Abbat wrote: > On Wed, 31 Dec 1969, Jorge Llambias wrote: > >I have also used {tolcanci} a few times. > > > >I agree it is somewhat weird, but that's what we got to > >work with. > > That reminds me of the French for shallow: peu profond. That is as it should be. When there is a scale bounded by zero at one end and unbounded at the other, natlangs often form the negative term (low degree) by negating the positive one (high degree), and use the positive one as default. The opposite is either not attested at all or extremely rare. Derivations such as `undislike' for `like' and `undisagree' for `agree' in Klingon are one of Okrand's ways of making it unlike the natural Terran languages, remember. > The place structure of "mifra" is: x1 is ciphertext, x2 > is plaintext, x3 is the type of cipher. What is the place > structure of "tolmifra"? It should be the same. What it can mean is a different story. {to'e} means scalar opposite, which is not the same thing as reversal of the effect of an action, right? So {tolmifra} doesn't automatically mean `decode'; there has to be a scale that has {mifra} at one end. Who will volunteer to define it? --Ivan