length vs longness

["Steven M. Belknap" <sbelknap@UIC.EDU>]

ua

I think I understand why I was confused about the meaning of <clani>. I
thought <clani> meant "X1 has length in dimension x2 by standard x3." Jorge
said it meant "x1 is long in dimension x2 by standard x3." I now agree with
Jorge's usage:

>xorxes cusku di'e
>>In spite of what I said before, I think it should be {le ka clani},
>>not {le clani}. As Goran pointed out, a property can't be long.

I realized I was much more likely to be wrong than Jorge when it came to
the meaning of a gismu. But the definition seemed to support my view. To
figure out where I went wrong, I looked at some gismu which dealt with
similar concepts. Consider weight:

*weight (heavy in |), x1 is heavy/weighty in mass/| by standard x2 /:/ /=/
tilju (tij)
*weight (light in |), x1 is light in mass/| by standard x2 /:/ /=/ linto (li'o)
*weight (| in field), x1 is the | of object x2 in [gravitational or other
force] field x3 /:/ /=/ junta
*gram, x1 is x2 |(s) [metric unit] in mass (default is 1) by standard x3
/:/ /=/ grake (gra)

For some reason <junta> uses a different sumti order than <grake>, but this
isn't a big deal. Now lets look at length.

*long (having length), x1 is | in dimension/direction x2 (default longest
dimension) by measurement standard x3 /:/ /=/ clani (cla)
*long (in 2nd most significant dimension), x1 is |/wide in dimension x2 [|
in 2nd most significant dimension] by standard x3 /:/ /=/ ganra (gan)
*long (in smallest dimension), x1 is thick in dimension/direction x2 by
standard x3; [relatively | in smallest dimension] /:/ [also stout] /=/
rotsu (rot tsu ro'u)
*short (| in dimension), x1 is | in dimension/direction x2 (default longest
dimension) by measurement standard x3 /:/ /=/ tordu (tor to'u)
*short (| in smallest direction: thin), x1 is thin in direction/dimension
x2 by standard x3; [relatively | in smallest dimension] /:/ /=/ cinla
*narrow (small in 2nd most significant dimension), x1 is | in dimension x2
[2nd most significant dimension] by standard x3 /:/ /=/ jarki (jak)
*meter, x1 is x2 |(s) [metric unit] in length (default is 1) measured in
direction x3 by standard x4 /:/ /=/ mitre (tre)

I was confused by the notation:
*long (having length)
I think "(having length)" is intended to mean "has a physical length" as
opposed to (say) a temporal length. It is apparently *not* intended to mean
"has length". So the paired opposites would be

<linto> :: <tilju> for weight
<clani> :: <tordu> for length in longest dimension
<ganra> :: <jarki> for length in the second longest dimension
<rotsu> :: <cinla> for length in shortest dimension

You don't need analogous words for <junta> when talking about weight. I
realize this is simple stuff, but it sure confused me. I have found it
quite helpful to take related gismu and group their definitions together to
sort out exactly what they mean. lojbab seemed to think that a thesaurus
would not make sense for lojban, maybe something *like* a thesaurus would
be helpful. Of course, if the definitions were structured cleverly, one
could imbed them in a database to look at the gismu in this way and make
your *own* minithesaurus each time you were stuck.

If there are only 70 gismu that have sumti for standards, why not drop the
standards? Is it too late to do this? Is this part of the language already
baselined? If it is then,

.uunai .i co'omi'e la stivn


Steven M. Belknap, M.D.
Assistant Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Medicine
University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria

email: sbelknap@uic.edu
Voice: 309/671-3403
Fax:   309/671-8413