Re: Dvorak (& Lojban)

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

>The same happens with "longer". Can you say that one
>thing is longer than another when you wouldn't say that
>either of them is long? In English, yes. In Lojban, you
>shouldn't use {clani} to translate "longer". We should
>rather use tremau: zmadu fi le ka mitre.

I'm not quite managing to keep up with the discussion in real time, but
spotting this, I see a key point.  "tremau" to me isn't zmadu fi le ka mitre
which I would take as being "more displaying the property of being measured
in mitres" or thus "more measureable in mitres" - probably true of things
at the macro level than of interstellar distances or atomic ones, and of
course more  true of daistances than weights.  tremau in not "longer".
clanymau should be "longer", and we then beg the question of ni because
we disagree whether it is "zmadu fi le ni/ka clani".

>But I have no problem in using {ka/ni clani} like that! As long as it is
>clear
>that you are being pseudo-mathematical. To say that something is twice
>as clani as something else, you need that both things be clani, and you
>don't need that one have twice the length of the other.

I think here again, I disagree.  Two things need not be clani to have ni clani.
Just as two things need not be blanu to have ni blanu.  Something zirpu
is zmadu fi leni blanu than something xekri, and it depends on your color
theory as to whether something blabi or zirpu is zmadu fi leni blanu.

Note that there is more than one unit of measure involved in ni blanu -
hue, and saturation are both factors.  Butt there is no single measurement
unit corrresponding to mitre for length that applies to amounto of blueness.
Yet we certainly can tal;k about things that have more blue in them without
saying that they ARE blue.

Now if you want to say that something zirpu is blanu because it has ni blanu,
you can try to convince those around me (I often call things that are zirpu,
"blanu" because I respond more tot he blueness component of the color than to
the redness/purpleness).

lojbab
----
lojbab                                                lojbab@access.digex.net
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
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