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Discussion of "zi'ai"

Comment #1: pe'ai
Curtis W Franks (Sun Jun 14 21:40:42 2015)
Comment #2: Re: pe'ai
Jonathan (Mon Jun 15 05:40:48 2015)

Yes, I have seen pe'ai, but I think zai'e / zi'ai has several
advantages over it:

1. Most gismu are meant to have la?c meanings by default. Using simple
terms like "block", "set", or "group" (or even say, "flying" in Magic the
Gathering) for a technical, specialized purpose is the realm of jargon, and
as such, should receive the unnegated form.

2. The proposed rafsi is meant as a way to disambiguate if a jargon word
should "trickle down" to the mainstream, or if several fields that use the
same jargon word intersect within a context, causing potential
polysemy/ambiguity. For example, let's say (zai'e girzu) "group" has gained
a very specialized meaning within the context of computers. Then, the lujvo
(samzamgri) would then refer unambiguously to this meaning.

Comment #3: Re: pe'ai
Curtis W Franks (Mon Jun 15 17:31:20 2015)

spheniscine wrote:
> Yes, I have seen pe'ai, but I think zai'e / zi'ai has several
> advantages over it:
>
> 1. Most gismu are meant to have la?c meanings by default. Using simple
> terms like "block", "set", or "group" (or even say, "flying" in Magic the

> Gathering) for a technical, specialized purpose is the realm of jargon,
and
> as such, should receive the unnegated form.
>
> 2. The proposed rafsi is meant as a way to disambiguate if a jargon word
> should "trickle down" to the mainstream, or if several fields that use
the
> same jargon word intersect within a context, causing potential
> polysemy/ambiguity. For example, let's say (zai'e girzu) "group" has
gained
> a very specialized meaning within the context of computers. Then, the
lujvo
> (samzamgri) would then refer unambiguously to this meaning.

1. I was trying to maintain similarity with pe'a. The definition bein
reversed from this one has its advantages, and the very fact that lay speak
is default (if it is, especially with non-gismu brivla) could even be seen
as justification for the unreversed definition as much as the it is for the
reversed one.

2. I am not sure that rafsi are really necessary (why not just make the
lujvo and then tag it with a jargon marker?), but I can imagine in some
cases that it might (maybe an internal jargon marker would make it mean
something different from an external one). In any case, if a rafsi is
desired, pe'ai has options as well: -pep-, -pef-, and -peg- for a start.
I do recognize that marking for jargon within lujvo would be easier in the
reversed definition, so if that is seen as more useful, then the definition
should be reversed.



I really do not care overly much which word is used for this purpose. I
just want a word to exist for it. But st present, the conflicting
definitions for this word make it less than desirable to me.

Comment #4: Re: pe'ai
Curtis W Franks (Mon Jun 15 17:33:58 2015)

spheniscine wrote:
> Yes, I have seen pe'ai, but I think zai'e / zi'ai has several
> advantages over it:
>
> 1. Most gismu are meant to have la?c meanings by default. Using simple
> terms like "block", "set", or "group" (or even say, "flying" in Magic the

> Gathering) for a technical, specialized purpose is the realm of jargon,
and
> as such, should receive the unnegated form.
>
> 2. The proposed rafsi is meant as a way to disambiguate if a jargon word
> should "trickle down" to the mainstream, or if several fields that use
the
> same jargon word intersect within a context, causing potential
> polysemy/ambiguity. For example, let's say (zai'e girzu) "group" has
gained
> a very specialized meaning within the context of computers. Then, the
lujvo
> (samzamgri) would then refer unambiguously to this meaning.

1. I guess that abother issue with me is that I very commonly use words in
a technical sense in English, so it is more useful to me to explicitly mark
when I mean them to be not-technical than when they are. Anyone working in
a field would probably develop such a habit as well.

Comment #5: Re: pe'ai
Jonathan (Mon Jun 15 18:17:27 2015)

Sufficiently specialized lujvo or zi'evla with very specific definitions
will not need to be marked. I'm only proposing marking use of common words,
typically gismu, in a technical manner. Technically, when one does that,
they are sense-shifting it from a broad, laic term, to a more specialized,
technical one. Thus, marking it is desirable, so that it can be defined
within that particular technical field.

Comment #6: Re: pe'ai
Jonathan (Mon Jun 15 19:27:06 2015)

Addintionally, basing it on pe'a brings up another confounding factor.
Sometimes, the technical sense of a word *is* also metaphorical. It'd be
confusing for something to be both pe'a and pe'ainai

Take this hypothetical situation; we are Lojbanist scientists back in the
1960's, working on this newfangled machine called a "computer", and we just
invented the "computer mouse".

We could call it (smacu pe'a); but the problem is that (pe'a) is inherently
fuzzy; we can't assign any one meaning to it, even within the very narrow
context of being inventors of a bleeding-edge technology that we have no
idea of its future potential.

However, we can assign a meaning to (zai'e smacu) within this particular
narrow context of computer science. We don't even need the (pe'a), because
by assigning it the jargon meaning, we have divorced it from its original
meaning. We also don't care if anyone else assigns a meaning to (zai'e
smacu) while working on something completely different; all we care about
is that within this particular field, we have assigned one meaning to it.

Then fast forward a few decades. Computers become a very big thing, and
have gained mainstream acceptance. We've even added the gismu skami to
the dictionary. Thus, laypeople have a need to talk about computer mice.
Thus, they can take (zai'e smacu), turn it to (zamsmacu), then add the
rafsi for skami, making (samyzamsmacu). Then after some amount of
high-frequency usage, they may just drop the -zam- rafsi altogether, making
(samsmacu).

Comment #7: Re: pe'ai
Jonathan (Tue Jun 16 06:08:25 2015)

I'm also open to the idea of having both zai'e/zi'ai *and* pe'ai.
pe'ai may still be useful as a sentence discursive meaning "In layman's
terms", or to mark a term as specifically laic in contexts where many words
have already been narrowed to be specific technical terms, as you note.

Comment #8: Re: pe'ai
Jonathan (Tue Jun 16 06:24:23 2015)

Though I suppose that could be just (zi'ainai), as I don't expect that
sense to be used repeatedly like zai'e/zi'ai; just to mark either
entire sentences/statements, or single words.

Comment #9: Re: pe'ai
Jonathan (Tue Jun 16 06:29:29 2015)

I can also see zai'e/zi'ai being used even for things like unassigned
reljvo, as it might be undesirable to actually "book" the reljvo on JVS for
something that only has meaning within one particular game, e.g.

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