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[cross-posted to Jboske]
Craig:
> >However, asking "Is this a taxi/taksi" is no different from
> >asking "Are you a baby?", "Are you a university student?". Do
> >answer that, you have to add tense, yielding, say: "Is this a
> >taxi now?", "Are you a baby now?" Clearly you aren't a baby now;
> >you're an ex-baby. But is a taxicab sans passenger a taksi now, or
> >only an ex-taxi? So really I think my original point stands
>
> I think a taksi, like a taxi, is a vehicle for transporting people.
> Thus, it taksi if it is carrying me to my destination, looking for a
> fare, or parked in the garage while its owner sleeps. In fact, if
> business is slow and it has never had a fare, and the cabbie is not
> persistent so it never will have a fare, I'd say it can *still* be a
> taxi. But if I buy the cab off of em and use it as a more normal karce,
> it has mo'u taksi. Of course, all of this assumes we decide that taxi is
> gismu-worthy, which I certainly don't buy. But it applies equally well to
> lo taksike or whatever lujvo you come up with.
Certainly you are correct for any brivla that translates the word
"taxi" in English and other languages. So setting aside whether
there should be another brivla meaning "x1 is a taxi1 carrying
passenger x2 for fare x3", we can say that there is a demonstrable
need for a brivla meaning "x1 is a taxi2 *FOR* carrying passenger x2
for fare x3".
"taxi2" then patterns with a whole class of brivla such as {dakfu},
"x1 is a knife FOR cutting x2 (with blade of material x3)". These
seem to me to pose a profound problem of a sort the Jboske list
agonized copiously over some months back, so followups to this
should probably go to Jboske. But in brief, the "FOR" creates
a logical abstraction such that the quantifier on the x2 is
*within* the abstraction. (For example, "This is a knife for
cutting a coconut" should not entail "There is a coconut that
this a knife for cutting".)
It is incumbent on the combined efforts of jboske & the BF to
find a solution to this problem (& presumably one that doesn't
require the place-structures of oodles of gismu to be altered!),
but the lesson for the time being is that currently we cannot
blithely have place-structures of the form "x1 is a broda for
doing x2" without screwing up the logical dimension of the
language. (So as not to inspire panic, let me add that if the
x2 were a sumti with Nick's proposed new {lau} gadri, the problem
would probably be solved.)
--And.