feminism

[Logical Language Group <cbmvax!uunet!GREBYN.COM!pucc.PRINCETON.EDU!lojbab>]

Nick has in effect challenged me:  to define a lujvo with place
structure for feminism.  I respond, noting that there are probably as
many definitions of feminism as there are feminists.  But to avoid
begging the question, I'll try anyway.

I write this and the next paragraph after those which follow.  Here are
two Lojbanisms for 'feminism' that result from the following analysis.

loi nimjizdunkri
loi nimnaujizdunkri

Without reading further, using only the gismu lists, what place
structures would you guess the lujvo have, given only the knowledge that
we are trying to represent an agreed upon concept that has the implied
usage contexts that would normally be found in a discussion of feminism.
The two do not necessarily have the same structures.  I am presuming, as
in all lujvo-making, that we are dealing as cooperative speaker and
listener; i.e. the goal is NOT to come up with the most outlandish place
structure possible, but the one that a user of either of those terms
would use in the context of a discussion of feminism.

If you would criticize Lojban lujvo, you should try this, not giving up
because it seems too hard or too ambiguous.  It isn't, because I did it
below.

I contend that if you decide that you MUST get a single place structure
out of either of those Lojban words then you will come very close to
what I ended up with.  Then, bearing in mind that these words, actually
used in sentences that require those place structures, will have
plausible values filled into many or all of the defined places.  When
you see the resulting place structure and make up even the most trivial
sentence using all the places, you will hopefully agree with me that a
reader of such a sentence would easily be able to understand the lujvo
and its place structure.

Now, having jumped to the conclusion, here is the analysis I went
through to get there:

Note that I am defining feminism as the mass of feminists.  An
alternative formula often used by JCB is that an '-ism' is a belief
system (krici ciste), but I think that adds little to the concept as it
is actually used.  That would be more like a feminist political
platform, in my mind.

Without argument in support, I will coin a tanru for one meaning of
feminist:

ninmu ke jinzi dunli ke'e krici
woman type-of innately equal, believer

or using bo for the same grouping:

ninmu jinzi bo dunli krici
woman innately-equal believer

As a tanru, this of course has the place structure of "krici", because
you can fill in places of the other components using be/bei.  This is
not possible in lujvo, so the places, or at least important ones for a
lujvo, must be part of the place structure.

I am analyzing the place structure as I go.  I did not consciously think
out the place structure for the resulting lujvo of this tanru, nor
indeed have I yet actually constructed the lujvo word itself as I write
this.  We will see how well instinctive lujvo-making works as compared
with, say, dikyjvo lujvo-making, which Nick seems to say is incapable of
dealing with the likes of "feminism" anyway.

Next I will extract gismu list information for the components:

ninmu x1 is a woman    rafsi: nim ni'u

(I chose ninmu over fetsi, because the question of children's rights is
generally considered separate, and fetsi has an "of species x2" that
raises questions of 'speciesism'.  So I keep it simple.

jinzi x1 is an innate/intrinsic/inherent property of x2  rafsi jiz

(I leave out questions of English 'rights' here as well.  My
understanding of the concept seems to suggest that 'rights' are merely a
kind of jinzi themselves.  Thus 'equal rights' can be expressed as
jinzi-dunli (innately-equal) or dunli-jinzi (equal-inherent_trait).  I
chose the former for this - more malglico and hence probably more suited
for this concept which is probably substantially English/American in its
cultural basis.)

dunli x1 is equal to x2 in dimension/property x3  rafsi: dun du'i

(Hmm.  Maybe we want innately-equal_in_inherent_trait. jinzi ke jinzi
dunli jinzi ke jinzi ke jinzi dunli ...  %^) Added terms may be more
exact but they really add little to the concepts involved; indeed one
measure of whether you have gone far enough in incorporating components
in your lujvo is whether you get all the places you feel are important
from the source components.  Repeated terms therefore make sense only if
they will bring in multiple occurrences of places which actually have
semantic differences in their values which are important to the final
concept.  I don't think this is true of repeated jinzi components, even
though the semantics of the two (or more) "jinzi"s in relation to the
rest of the metaphor are clearly different.)

krici x1 believes creed x2 about x3  rafsi: kri

ke has rafsi kem, and ke'e is its own rafsi; bo has rafsi bor

Now let us look at the goal:

I want a place structure something like

x1 believes women are innately equal to x2 in properties/rights x3

having identified the potential complexities of species and age as I went
along, x2 is important - what does a feminist believe women are equal to?
If you merely want 'men' you could probably eliminate the x2 place using the
tanru:

ninmu jo'u nanmu jinzi bo dunli krici
women in common with men  innately-equal believer

I believe this would eliminate the x2 place above


Thus the lujvo for the hypothetical 3-placer could be

nimkemjizdunke'ekri  or nimjizbordunkri

and the two-placer

nimjo'unaujizbordunkri

I might argue that the ke/ke'e/bo/jo'u terms can probably be deleted
from the lujvo - they add little to the lujvo because leaving them out,
while it perverts the implied tanru grouping, the tanru formed by
leaving them out have no obvious usefulness in discourse.  I thus favor:

nimjizdunkri
nimnaujizdunkri

which is what I am now putting up at the top of this essay.

I will now build up the place structure piece by piece, remembering the
grouping as I go, even though I am eliminating it in the final lujvo.

jinzi bo dunli
x1 is innately equal to x2 in property x3

To analyze:

ninmu jinzi bo dunli

I put 'women' into x1:

Women are innately-equal to x1 in property x2

The variant version with men and women is:

Women in common with men are innately-equal in property x1

Either is then combined with krici:

x1 believes (Women are innately-equal to x2 in property x3) about ...
x1 believes (Women in common with men are innately-equal in property x2)
   about ...

The 'about' place is superfluous.  Almost anything could go into it in a
lujvo of this complexity.  Indeed the x2 and x3 of both krici and djuno
are likely to rarely be both filled in since they are highly
interrelated.  So I leave it out of the final lujvo, which is more about
the belief than about the believer.  This type of superfluous place
deletion is as far as I know, not allowed for in jimc's dikyjvo theory,
but is essential to trimming place structures of long lujvo.

The results:

x1 believes women are innately-equal to x2 in property x3
x1 believes women in common with men are innately-equal in property x2

which is exactly the goal I set out when I started.  My analysis
definitely supported my conclusion.  Did yours?  I will be happy to see
someone's posted alternate analysis.

lojbab