birthday? re.

["Mark E. Shoulson" <shoulson@CTR.COLUMBIA.EDU>]

>Date:         Tue, 6 Jul 1993 22:21:40 EET
>From: "F.Baube[tm]" <flb%FLB.OPTIPLAN.FI@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU>
>X-To:         lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu

>> >> giving, perhaps, "nu jbena kei djedi" for "birthday".
>> >>
>> >> ~mark
>>
>> >*quelle* portmanteau
>>
>> Blech.  I wasn't really thinking, obviously.  {djedi} is the wrong gismu
>> for the more common meaning of "birthday".  Colin had it better with
>> {detri}.  Still, I don't see anything wrong with the structure of it; {nu
>> jbena key detri} sounds okay.  What's so "*quelle*" about it? :-)

>If I can't say birthday in three syllables or less I don't want one  ;-)

Then I counsel you never to visit Israel near your birthday, since "yom
huledet," at four syllables, is a totally unacceptable phrase for birthday
by your definition.  Wonder how they manage it.  (and the correct definite
form, "yom hahuledet", at five, is even worse).  My High School French says
it's "anniversaire" in that language, which also weighs in at four.
Besides, I was giving the extened, tanru form.  There could always be
shorter lujvo versions.  But blithely to state that more than three
syllables is unacceptable is to display a lack of appreciation for the
differing aesthetics and methods that exist among languages.

>Languages must adapt to survive, irregardless of their aesthetics

Indeed, and regardless, too, of your own personal opinions as to what their
aesthetics should be.

>> >BTW what is Lojban for "portmanteau" ?
>>
>> >one *must* have *meta*-words
>>
>> Lojban tends to have met-everythings coming out of all its orifices.
>> "Portmanteau" as in "word with multiple meanings"?  Um, "se smuni be
>> so'i/za'upa da valsi", or simplified lujvo?  There are lots of
>> possibilities.

>No no no, "meta-" is (in computerese) an "escape character",
>that takes one "one level up" in logic and truth-assessment.

>for example,

>   Spock says,

>          "I am lying"

I thought you meant words talking about other words, which of course is
simple.  To jump a level out, lojban has a mess of methods.  There's
quoting, which turns a chunk of language (or anything, depending on the
method used) into a simple argument to be considered (e.g. He said, "The
sky is falling." {ko'a cusku lu le tsani cu farlu li'u} or "'cmene' is a
root word [in lojban]" {zo cmene cu gismu} or "'Mark' is my name." {zo
mark. cmene mi}) Then there are methods of abstracting predications into
arguments, as in "My going to the store took three hours" {le nu mi klama
le zarci cu cacra li ci} [Note: that's how long it took me to travel there,
by the wording used].  And so on.

>This cannot be evaluated at "face value", and thus
>Harvey Mudd's primitive robots suffered meltdown.

Well, actually, "I am lying" is often a sensible sentence, particularly in
Lojban, where time need not be expressed.  If you have no time-information,
the sentence reduces to "I lie (sometimes)", which is a perfectly
reasonable thing to say.  Even if you specify the time, "I am lying at this
very moment", it means that besides all the other things you're doing,
you're lying.  OK, you're talking to me, and telling me you're lying, but
in that you're being truthful.  You're lying in that you're also typing or
signing an untruth, probably to someone else, or even speaking one out of
another mouth (if you have one)!  You mean something like "this statement
is false."

>One must be able to make an assertion not just about
>*some other assertion*, but also about *the same assertion*

>In Lojban, can this irrational thought be expressed ?

Something along the lines of "this statement is false" can be expressed
using the pro-utterance "dei" {dei jitfa} or "nei" {na nei} or some such.
When John Cowan asked about the distinction between those two once, my head
started hurting, so you'd best ask him for details on those.

~mark