Subject: Re: [lojban] RE: Orcutt (again?!)

From: "michael helsem" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 01:19:00

>From: And Rosta <[email-masked]>
li'o
>Michael, there's something weird about your message formatting

alas, when i send from where i'm housesitting this week, the
combination of hotmail + a strange PC, wants to run my messages
through some kind of crummy Word Perfect thingy first-sorry!

>
>At any rate, in reply to you, surely DJUNO = savoir and SE SLABU = 
>connaitre,

i thought i might be misremembering...

>not the other way around. In general when discussing logical distinctions 
>I'm
>reluctant to sweep it under the carpet by simply defining appropriate 
>lujvo,
>but in this case you may be right that the difference between knowing what 
>CAT
>means and knowing about cats is related to the savoir/connaitre difference.
>Still, I remain to be convinced, and it is perfectly possible (and in fact 
>true)
>that ASH and EPAMINONDAS are words that are familiar (se slabu) to me yet 
>that
>have meanings that I know only a small incomplete and inadequate portion 
>of.
>

how much of the meaning of a word do you know or need to know?
good question. a lot of the words i use, have been acquired through
reading; & once in awhile a strict dictionary lookup will show i
didn't quite get it... on the other hand, to a scientist or other
technician, the definition may be enough to distinguish it from other
words, while remaining totally inadequate for scientific purposes.
and to name a thing, moreover, does not necessarily require you to
know the entire range of variety that that thing may take... on the
other hand, as a poet many words to me have the overtone of all the
contexts i have read it in, which is far more than any dictionary
definition & to me, the truer one. so, i guess what i am saying is,
the meaning of a word depends upon but is not limited by usage,
because usage is non-uniform.

this is probably a long way from the first thought of the thread.

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