Subject: Re: [lojban] common words

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 04 Dec 2000 22:34:31

la pier cusku di'e

>selmifra: x1 is plaintext for x2 in code x3
>mifygau: x1 makes ciphertext x2 out of plaintext x3 using code x4
>
>Now if "selmifygau" is selmif + gau, then it's
>x1 makes plaintext x2 out of ciphertext x3 using code x4.

That would be one way of seeing it, but it does not
follow directly from the meaning of -gau.

This is how I see it:

{ko'a ko'e ko'i ko'o mifygau}:
{ko'a gasnu le nu ko'e ko'i ko'o mifra}

{ko'a ko'e ko'i ko'o selmifygau}:
{ko'a gasnu le nu ko'e ko'i ko'o selmifra}

But those two say the same thing. There is nothing in {gasnu}
that says how le gasnu makes le se gasnu happen, especially no
connection with the order of places in the subclause. In theory
then {mifygau} could mean both encode and decode, it could
even mean "x1 works out a code x4 such that arbitrary text x2
is a coded form of arbitrary text x3". Anything that makes the
three following arguments be in the mifra relationship. It just
seems that "encode" might be the most useful meaning of the
three for that lujvo. We could conventionally assign "decode"
to {selmifygau} as well, of course, but then we are giving
significance to the order of places in a clause, which is not
usually significant in Lojban (quantifiers aside).

To avoid all that we might use a more precise gismu instead
of {gasnu}. Maybe {cupra}:

mifpra: cupra lo mifra
c1 c2=m1 m2 c3=m3
"x1 produces ciphertext x2 from plaintext x3 by
process/codification procedure x4."

selmifpra: cupra lo selmifra
"x1 produces plaintext x2 from ciphertext x3 by
process/decodification procedure x4."

I still feel more comfortable with {mifygau}/{tolmifygau} though...

co'o mi'e xorxes

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