catra

[lojbab (Bob LeChevalier)]

jimc asks:
>Lojbab, so you remember what your values were here?

Yes in this case.  Nothing to do with your explanation.  First, I have a
strong dislike, indeed detestation for JCB's lujvo, which is based on
his'madzo' which is NOT a generic transitive.  His madzo is the same as
our 'zbasu' and means to make from something.  His 'durzo' is the same as
our 'gasnu' and is one kind of transitivizer.  He also has "ckozu" which,
is our 'rinka'.  If he had used 'ckozu' for his causal, there would be no
criticism, but madzo/zbasu means to make ... from materials ...

JCB's usage is simply malglico, and stuboornly so, since that is one of his
two primary examples of lujvo.

In deciding what to do about it, though, i was influenced by the gun-control
arguments about 'guns don;t kill people, people kill people', and realized
there was a funky causality question to be resolved.  THus, properly, 'kill'
could be 'dead-cause' using any of the causals or semi-causals for  the
'cause' term  in the tanru/lujvo.  Thus 'kill' can go into Lojban as:
'mrori'a', 'mroselja'e', and less likely as 'mroki'u', 'mromu'i', and the
mind-bending 'mroni'i'.   This was confirmed a couple weeks later in one of
my early readings on linguistics universals, wherein the causality problems
of 'kill' are among the more analyzed ones in language.  At that point, I
realized that you needed a generic term that made no assertions of the
nature of the causality for this one concept, if only to argue about the
causality problems.

I have considered the possibity that we may someday need a non-specific
causal for Lojban.  JCB defined ckozu as his, then used madzo all the time
and in other places has said that ckozu is limited to physical causes
(as is rinka).  The LOglan/Lojban causality situation is thus quite rich,
but thoroughly untested, and may need more work after usage hits it.  My own
feeling is that non-descript causality is handled by 'jalge', but I'm not a 
philosopher, and this is an issue to be handled by Lojban-speaking philosophers.

lojbab