Chemical Element Gismu

[cowan (John Cowan)]

When I posted my list of names and le'avla for the chemical elements,
I posted the existing chemical element gismu without comment, accepting
them as a fait accompli.  Since then, there has been plenty of complaint,
notably from la djim. kartr. (who proposes adding some and dropping others)
and la .iVAN. and la nitcion. (who don't like any of them).

la lojbab. has also proposed broadening some (perhaps not all) of the elements.

For review purposes, here is the current list:

	cidro hydrogen (H)
	cnisa lead (Pb)
	kijno oxygen (O)
	kliru chlorine (Cl)
	margu mercury (Hg)
	navni neon (Ne)
	nikle nickel (Ni)
	rijno silver (Ag)
	romge chrome (Cr)
	sliri sulfur (S)
	sodna sodium (Na)
	solji gold (Au)
	tabno carbon (C)
	tinci tin (Sn)
	tirse iron (Fe)
	trano nitrogen (N)
	tunka copper (Cu)
	zinki zinc (Zn)

la djim. kartr. cusku di'e:
>Elements that should have gismu:
>	Al  Aluminum	Common and important construction material
>	Mg  Magnesium	Construction material; important human nutrient
>	P   Phosphorus	Important human nutrient
>	Ca  Calcium	Important human nutrient; main ingredient in many rocks
>	Si  Silicon	Major technological material; major rock ingredient
>	K   Potassium	Important human nutrient (biologically contrast to Na)
>	Ti  Titanium	Construction material, use likely to increase in future
>
>Elements that I'm surprised to see on the list:
>	Cr  romge	Chromed tailfins aren't so important any more.  See 
>			also Ni.
>	Hg  margu	Though known to the ancients, I couldn't justify giving
>			it space in a limited list.
>	Ne  navni	Most advertising signs don't even contain neon
>	Ni  nikle	Marginal; important alloying element but people don't
>			come in contact with it in identifiable form, except
>			in U.S. coinage (which has little Ni anyway, these
>			days)
>	Zn  zinki	See Ni.  Brass is more identifiable than zinc.

la nitcion. denounces Ne and Ni particularly, and labels tanru based on them
"malglico crudities", as indeed they are.

la lojbab. cusku di'e:
>[JCB] made gismu for most
>of the first 1000 concepts, unless there was an OBVIOUS 2-term lujvo based on
>higher frequency words.

[...]

>Indeed, if [a word] was already made as a gismu, we kept it UNLESS, someone
>explicitly proposed its deletion accompanied by (usually) a 2-term lujvo
>for the concept.  About 20 odd words were so deleted before the baseline.

[...]

>The argument that the remaining elelment words may be biased towards English
>or at least European cultures is plausible and proabbly valid.  These were
>justified by their use in metaphors BEFORE we had the now clear policy
>against heavily figuartive metaphors.  Even so, I believe there are ways
>to define these words based on the metaphorical properties attributed to
>the substance, leaving the 'chemical word' either for a lujvo (using pure
>or chemical) or a le'avla.  Thus nickel is fine as is, chrome is highly
>reflective non-tarnishing metal, neon is flourescent (or possibly plasma? or
>possibly inert), chlorine can be used for all the halogens, (people put
>kliru lights on their cars?), etc.  Thus eliminating the most obvious part
>of the bias, but more importantly allowing the words to be useful.

I believe this proposal is seriously flawed, and contradicts the dicta
laid down in the earlier quoted sections.  Each of the proposed meanings
can easily be represented as lujvo:

	minryjinme: reflective metal
	cadyxu'i: inactive chemical
	silnypau: halogen (lit. salt component)

And if a gismu is wanted for "plasma", then build it on the 6-language
words for "plasma", not for "neon"!  As for "fluorescent", obviously this
should be built on a gismu for "fluorine", if there were one (which I
am >not< proposing).

This whole proposal is merely an attempt to rationalize the presence in
the gismu list of words which don't really belong there.  "We've got them,
so let's try to find something to do with them."  Better to drop them
and go to a new principle for the presence of element names.

MY PROPOSAL:

Include only the element names which are required for cultural neutrality;
whose names in the major chemical/scientific languages vary.  Most of these
can be spotted easily by comparing the chemical symbols with the English
names; thus Fe = iron and Na = sodium.  In addition, German is a major
language of chemistry (though not one of the Lojban Six, it was one of the
Old Loglan Eight), and has non-international names for H, N, O, and C.
S is also variously named in other languages.

This leaves us with the following list:

	H, O, C, N, S, Pb, Hg, Ag, Na, Au, Sn, Fe, Cu, K (new), and Sb (new).

The following are dropped, to be replaced by names and le'avla:

	Cl, Ne, Ni, Cr, Zn.

--
cowan@snark.thyrsus.com		...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan
		e'osai ko sarji la lojban