Antonyms (was: TECH.QUERY: zo bancu cu mo zo zmadu leka smuni)

["Mark E. Shoulson" <shoulson@CTR.COLUMBIA.EDU>]

>Date:         Fri, 18 Sep 1992 08:04:17 -0700
>From: jimc%MATH.UCLA.EDU@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU
>> Date:          Fri, 18 Sep 1992 09:33:37 -0400
>> From:  "Mark E. Shoulson" <shoulson@CTR.COLUMBIA.EDU>
>> Hrm, actually, that's a stronger argument than I was prepared for:
>> why *do* we need both [less-than, more-than]?  But again, that's yet
>> another topic.
>Whenever a language is highly simplified, as Lojban is, one thinks of
>"newspeak" in Orwell's "1984".  double-plus-un-more-than!  JCB could
>have used negation or conversion for all antonyms, but I suspect he
>rejected this method because of the negative connotations bred by
>Orwell.  He says that he provided antonyms where they were high in
>frequency on the Eaton list.  These antonyms were then fed through to
>the Lojban vocabulary.

OK, I'll accept that answer.  I guess I was getting a little overloaded by
all the concepts that wind up getting expressed as SE GISMU (not antonyms
as such, using {to'e} is different).  I don't mind the occasional
inconsistency of having a gismu for back-relationship here but not there,
especially if it can be backed up by frequency analyses.  Still doesn't
help with {bancu}/{zmadu}.

~mark