binxo

[lojbab (Bob LeChevalier)]

commenting on cowan on jimc on the place strcuture

It seems to me that a debate over whether, if "Harry becomes Sally" there is
or is not an identity change, is a philosophical one tied at least partly
to your idea of identity.  If a building becomes rubble, it changes identity
- you would not call the rubble "the Empire State Building".  For the
phrase "and unto dust you shall return", which might be translated using
binxo, whether 'you' retain an identity at all is a religious question, and
Lojban does not want to presume the existence or non-existence of the soul
- in any event that dust might become someone else next year.

Normally, since the x2 place of binxo is a description (not an abstract bridi)
you are saying that x1 becomes something that x2 is a description of (i.e
that the x1 properly fills in the x1 of the x2 selbri.  This is a lingistic
operation and not a philosophical one.  Use more elaborate tanru or lujvo to
make distinction about the natureof becoming if it is important.

The use of "become" in most languages to join two "nouns" is the basis of our
place structure.  Hidden 'logical' structure in the semantics of words is
something we try to avoid analyzing yet - it might be easier to do so in
Lojban than in English.  But it is all we can do just to get place strcutrues
analyzed to be consistent with similar meaning words.

When I added binxo as a gismu, it was to separate it from cenba and galfi
which are clearly distinct in most everyone's mind, except Jim Brown's, since
he uses them interchangeably in Institute Loglan tanru with 2 gismu roots
- 1 of those roots resembles "cenba" (i think "*cenja") and the other is 
"*madzo" which is a malglico misuse of that word, since its place structure
is x1 makes state/object x2 out of x3 overlaps between  our "galfi" and
our "zbasu".  Thus Lojban has a triplet of words for change whose meanings
are distinguished primarily from each other as noted:

galfi:   x1 modifies x2 into x3 by x4      induced change of another

cenba:   x1 varies in property x2 by amount x3   variation with time with
                                           indication of process, but not
                                           of agent or final state
binxo:   x1 becomes x2                     variation tha suggests a final
                                           state different than the start,
                                           but no implication of agent
se te galfi (selterga'i) would be galfi with places in order
         x2, x3, x1, x4 giving
         x1 becomes x2 instigated by x3 doing/being x4
                                           which is binxo with a clear agent
-lojbab