Subject: RE: [lojban] ma smuni zo senva

From: "And Rosta" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2001 04:24:33 +0100

Lojbab:
> At 09:46 PM 8/15/01 -0600, Jay Kominek wrote:
> >IMO, day dreams, nightmares, good dreams are all cases of senva. Hoping
> >that you get into graduate school isn't senva. Sitting around in class and
> >thinking about how neat it would be to be to have a graduate degree, such
> >that you're unaware of the professor lecturing, is senva.
> >
> >However, I would form some sort lujvo for all of them, and use the
> >appropriate lujvo instead of senva directly, as it seems to be a gismu
> >which is fairly vague and best left to lujvo/tanru construction.
> 
> Note that this is precisely the opposite philosophy that Colin Fine once 
> expressed which was to Lojbanically use the broad if more vague term where 
> possible. He noted that English speakers are prone to being overspecific 
> about some things that are obvious, and that Lojban seems to make a bit of 
> art of being creatively vague or elliptical in leaving out things English 
> finds essential (like tense and number).

Furthermore, tanru and lujvo are easier to interpret if they function to
restrict and narrow the meaning of the head ("an X sort of Y; a Y that is
X"). It's easier to narrow broad meanings than to broaden narrow meanings.

(a cowandictum:
"Blessed are the CHEESEMAKERS??"
"--It's figurative; he's obviously referring to any manufacturer of dairy 
products.")

--And.