Re: male/female, man/woman, human/person

[John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>]

la marvn. cusku di'e
 
>   Okay, the powers that be in the lojban community  discourage the use of
> nanmu (man) and ninmu (woman), saying that they're sexist.  Okay, I
> totally understand and support that guideline.

I think you are overgeneralizing from the guidelines about examples.
Of course it is all right to use nanmu/ninmu where necessary and useful.
We just try to avoid examples that refer to "le nanmu" and "le ninmu" all
the time, so that people don't feel excluded.  Similarly, the reference
grammar says "he or she" or avoids the issue.  This has nothing to do with
what to do when writing in Lojban!

Similarly, tanru of the form "nanmu/ninmu broda" are hard to construe.  Just what
is supposed to be a "male human" or "female human" attribute, beyond the
anatomical?  It's too culture-specific.

> The thing is, I wonder why
> they even exist as gismu.  Why not just combine fetsi (female) with prenu
> (person) to form fetpre (female person)?  (Or would it be fetypre?)

fetpre is correct.  "tp" is a valid consonant cluster, and "fe tpre" is impossible
because "tp" is *not* a valid initial cluster.

> It
> seems that fetpre and ninmu mean the same thing.  They both have the same
> place structure, and are non-age and -species specific.

Meaning is a sticky issue that we avoid defining as much as we can, and so
synonymy of predicates is not part of the Lojban definition.

In addition, "fetpre" may include a female cat that has a personality (to the
speaker), whereas "ninmu" surely excludes such a one.  I think the use of
"humanoid" in the place structure is plain waffling.... female chimps?
female ETIs?

-- 
John Cowan						cowan@ccil.org
			e'osai ko sarji la lojban