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Post to wrong list?

John Cowan posted this note to the newlang list. I think he probably intended
to post it to the Lojban list.

From: cbmvax!snark.thyrsus.com!cowan@uunet.UU.NET (John Cowan)
Subject: Re: Specific meanings of words
To: newlang@buphy.bu.edu (Newlang List)
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 92 13:29:45 EST
In-Reply-To: <9202171821.AA02170@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu>; from "And Rosta" at
             Feb 17, 92 6:16 pm
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]

la .and. rost. cusku di'e

> I'll illustrate my point using _botpi_, which is glossed 'bottle'.
> Here is its English sense (roughly):
> * made of glass
> * form: cylindrical, with neck at one end sealed by cork or cap; no handle
> * function: container; used for storage rather than preparation or serving
>
> Is this the Lojban sense also? Or is it just, say, "sealable container
> for liquid"?

At present, the most that can be said for sure is that a bottle must
potentially have contents (se botpi) and be made from a material (te botpi).
In other words, the place structures partly determine the sense: a predicate
cannot have a sense which contradicts them.

In a few cases, further disambiguation has been done:  "verba" means "child,
young person" -- not "offspring", which is expressed by other predicates.
Beyond these few remarks, we simply do not know the senses of the words yet.
The job of prescribing in full the senses of all 1400+ gismu -- to say nothing
of the lujvo and le'avla to come -- is just too large for any one person or
committee to accomplish.  It's about at the limit of human ability to
define even the place structures alone, and the effort requires intense
concentration over a long period of time.

The only mechanism with sufficient mental power to specify all the necessary
senses is an ongoing community of speakers, the "lobypli" of JL's title.
Therefore, the various language designers attempt to specify just enough to
permit such a community to come into existence.  In a halting and partial
way, it has already done so.  The fact that, say, Colin Fine, Mark Shoulson,
Nick Nicholas, lojbab, and I all give much the same answers to the same
(simple) questions is indicative of the community's existence.

"laititi a'u" (Polynesian, 'we are young').

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