Lojban Thinking

[djandus]

(All right, transport yourself into full-blown Lojbanistan of the future for a moment, full of native Lojban speakers -- a lot of this is hypothetical. Also, <generic disclaimer on my inexperience or mistakes>)

I've been thinking about how people define words.

When one person asks "What does beautiful mean?" the first thing the responder starting scrambling for is not the definition, but instead, synonyms. "Oh, you know, pretty... good-looking." Then he moves on to trying to put his finger on the real definition. "Pleasing to look at..." etc.

But when one Lojbanist asks for a meaning of {melbi}, (the proper way to ask this is another question of mine entirely, discussed below) he knows there probably not any good immediate synonym to begin with, and will go directly to definitions like {pluka se catlu}, examples like {ko'a melbi mi}, or more complicated descriptions.

Another example I thought of is "equal" vs. {du}. 

English speakers might start with "They're the same, equivalent... on the same level... <grabs dictionary>"

Lojban speakers would go straight to logical examples like {roda .i da du da}

I feel like this is another example of how Lojban might let the human mind get used to cutting out the crappy relationships it's used to having to make with natlangs. For one, Lojban doesn't allow for us to rely on synonyms to define things. For another, culturally, Lojban doesn't require us to have synonyms on hand to interchange words and keep conversation "interesting"... one of the other things I've suddenly started questioning about natlangs. (Why is it wrong to "overuse" a word when that describes what is going on? Why is it that there are at least two other words that I can easily use instead for the same meaning?)

(Total tangent: I've thus also been thinking about how very different it will be speaking/writing in Lojbanistan, where there is not cultural crime in using the same word often. For one thing, it must be easier to glance at a page and catch the main topics. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the entirety of what might be able to be in a Lojban "thesaurus" contained in the "cf." redirects in the gismu dictionary?)

About the question-asking...

Now that I think about it, the type of response given probably depends on the question.

One way might be {ki'a broda}, with the issue of "Are you confused about the meaning or my use of broda?"

Another might be {broda .ije'i mo}, for "Give me some examples and tell me their relation to broda."

Or maybe something as simple as {broda je'i mo}, if I understand how je'i works well enough.

Maybe a combination of these?

.i cusku da'u ta'i ma

mi'e djandus

<jandew...@gmail.com>

[MorphemeAddict]

Why do you think there won't be synonyms? There are synonyms in Lojban, and they could be used if necessary.

Examples also abound, although {ko'a melbi mi} is a horribly bad one, because any brivla can replace "melbi", except maybe one of those with only one argument place.

The idea of how best to define a word, even (or especially, in Lojban) is an interesting one.

It might be better to use a different strategy than to 'define' a word, e.g., reductive paraphrase.

 

stevo

 

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[djandus]

I meant there wouldn't be as close of synonyms as in English. As far as I know, there aren't Lojban words with as close of meaning as "pretty" vs. "beautiful" or "hard" vs. "difficult".

Also, I shifted in my mind, but did not write it, from thinking about dictionaries to thinking about speech in Lojbanistan. Thus, my example {ko'a melbi mi} was a good one, where I had in mind two people who know each other, and the definer points to something specifically pretty and makes his statement. Most words that don't have an x2 spot are ones that are "x1 is ____", usually an object of some type, so for those the definition would require finding an actual example of the object, or describing it, both of which are fairly straightforward and not distinct from the English methods.

Anyway, if you could give me an example where a Lojban word is best defined with the aid of a synonym, that'd be extremely helpful to me.

mi'e djandus

<jandew...@gmail.com>

[Pierre Abbat]

On Friday 13 May 2011 04:11:01 djandus wrote:
> I meant there wouldn't be as close of synonyms as in English. As far as I
> know, there aren't Lojban words with as close of meaning as "pretty" vs.
> "beautiful" or "hard" vs. "difficult".

The reason why there aren't many close synonyms is that Lojban doesn't yet
have an extensive vocabulary. Since the meaning of a lujvo is some
combination of the meanings of its components, close synonyms will usually be
fu'ivla.

> Anyway, if you could give me an example where a Lojban word is best defined
> with the aid of a synonym, that'd be extremely helpful to me.

"prokiono", "arxokuna", and "lumge'u" are synonyms. If someone knows one and
encounters another, the best way to define it is to give the synonym he
already knows. Another pair is "la kot.divuár" and "la xantyde'i xaskoi";
this pair exists in many languages except, of course, French.

Pierre
--
.i toljundi do .ibabo mi'afra tu'a do
.ibabo damba do .ibabo do jinga
.icu'u la ma'atman.

[Jorge Llambías]

On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 5:11 AM, djandus <jan...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I meant there wouldn't be as close of synonyms as in English. As far as I
> know, there aren't Lojban words with as close of meaning as "pretty" vs.
> "beautiful" or "hard" vs. "difficult".

"nandu" vs "tolfrili"

> Also, I shifted in my mind, but did not write it, from thinking about
> dictionaries to thinking about speech in Lojbanistan. Thus, my example {ko'a
> melbi mi} was a good one, where I had in mind two people who know each
> other, and the definer points to something specifically pretty and makes his
> statement.

Assumung the pretty thing is in front of the speaker, how would you
tell whether the definer was defining "melbi" or "crane"?

But in general, yes, that's how people learn how to use most words in
any language, by imitating others.

> Anyway, if you could give me an example where a Lojban word is best defined
> with the aid of a synonym, that'd be extremely helpful to me.

There are many "tol"-pairs: lenku-tolglare, xlali-tolxamgu, cmalu-tolbarda, ...

Also there are "sel"- or "ter"-pairs: rirni-selpanzi, cpacu-tersabji, ...

Even if they are not always exact synonyms one can often help in
defining the other.

Then there's things like "jivbu" and "nivji" which seem almost synonymous to me.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

[djandus]

On Friday, May 13, 2011 7:16:22 AM UTC-5, xorxes wrote:

On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 5:11 AM, djandus <jan...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I meant there wouldn't be as close of synonyms as in English. As far as I
> know, there aren't Lojban words with as close of meaning as "pretty" vs.
> "beautiful" or "hard" vs. "difficult".

"nandu" vs "tolfrili"

> Also, I shifted in my mind, but did not write it, from thinking about
> dictionaries to thinking about speech in Lojbanistan. Thus, my example {ko'a
> melbi mi} was a good one, where I had in mind two people who know each
> other, and the definer points to something specifically pretty and makes his
> statement.

Assumung the pretty thing is in front of the speaker, how would you
tell whether the definer was defining "melbi" or "crane"?

By another example, as I'd imagine learning new words as a beginner would always run for any language :) 

But in general, yes, that's how people learn how to use most words in
any language, by imitating others.

> Anyway, if you could give me an example where a Lojban word is best defined
> with the aid of a synonym, that'd be extremely helpful to me.

There are many "tol"-pairs: lenku-tolglare, xlali-tolxamgu, cmalu-tolbarda, ...

Also there are "sel"- or "ter"-pairs: rirni-selpanzi, cpacu-tersabji, ...

Even if they are not always exact synonyms one can often help in
defining the other.

Then there's things like "jivbu" and "nivji" which seem almost synonymous to me.

Ah, but they are very different (to different people :P )

(I don't actually know the difference, only that people who know it are very particular about it...) 

mu'o mi'e xorxes

As for everything else, let me clarify a bit.

As far as I know, (once again) all of these lujvo examples are ones created on-the-fly, not explicitly defined. For that, they are extremely similar to their basic tanru counterparts in this case, at least in that forming the word did not take recalling a basic familiar word so much as forming a new description from distinct words.

Basically, what I'm saying is if someone asks for the meaning of {lenku}, and you give {tolglare}, it's a description, the polar opposite. Thanks to Lojban's system of lujvo and tanru, when someone asks for one lujvo's meaning, there's probably a good way of describing it, purely with a selbri. When either person is interpreting this new combination, it's being interpreted by each individual part's meaning -- still completely different from giving "hard" as a synonym for "difficult". This is what I mean: Lojban makes describing things so simple and straightforward that we start doing it without even realize we're going through that effort. It's so simple to give {tolglare}, so obvious, but there is no other basic gismu that means the same thing as {lenku}. If there were, that would be a failure on Lojban's part. And I'm comparing this to things like "hard" vs. "difficult", to which I place no difference in meaning when I use them. In fact, the only reason I use "difficult" is because "hard" has two meanings, and I try to avoid that confusion. We even have defined the Lojban word for "difficult" with the gloss word "hard". They're two basic English words with the same usefulness in one respect, and when you use one in one sentence, you're culturally pressured to use another in the next, to avoid repetitiveness. But do we ever pressure Lojbanists to use {tolglare} if they used {lenku} recently? This is the fundamental difference I'm trying to point out -- the natlangs I have used expect extremely similar synonyms for the vast majority of words. Not different in part of speech or anything, at most slightly nuanced in connotation and at worst merely colloquial. And then they expect the speaker to have them all on hand to swap freely between them arbitrarily. Lojban instead simply says "Here's a set of unique basic words, and the rules for pulling the nuances out of their meanings. Have a field day." And it just works.

As for fu'ivla, that doesn't count -- if you're borrowing a word from another language, then of course there's a synonym.

tl;dr

My restriction was on gismu and Lojban culture, not borrowed words and descriptions.

My claim is that Lojban, lacking basic gismu synonyms for simplicity, makes it feel more natural to try to define words with useful descriptions or examples rather than first searching for a basic synonym.

I don't say that Lojban makes the descriptive or example process easier, it just cuts out that middle bit where you realize you already know a basic word for that.

-djandus

[John E Clifford]

Given the paucity of long Lojban passages. it is hard to say what the conventions are about repeating words.  I expect that the aesthetics of native languages will carry over, at least for a while.  On the other hand, I expect that synonyms (up to thesaurus grade) will be created for most existing words, including gismu -- at least partly simply to cover lapses of memory.  I haven't run through the gismu list in a very long time, but my memory is that there were only a few (maybe the classic 5+/- 2) cases of real synonymy at the x1 level (and even then with differences in the oblique cases), though there were more when exchange came into play (again, with differences in the oblique cases).  As for learning new words, synonymy is rearely the best approach, certainly as compared with a number of examples (to weed out extraneous features) and to the dramatic version of that, telling a story in which the new word plays a significant role.

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From: djandus <jan...@gmail.com>
To: loj...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Fri, May 13, 2011 8:01:21 AM
Subject: Re: [lojban] Lojban Thinking

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