Lojban Names.

["Mark E. Shoulson" <cbmvax!uunet!CTR.COLUMBIA.EDU!shoulson>]

Ivan writes:

>As I see it, when I need to mention a place name for real in a Lojban
>text, I'll use zoi or la'o quotes and the original spelling within.

Bingo!  I think mentioned this once before, and for my money it's really
the only way out of this whole messy discussion.  Only since la'o quotes
are a pain in the rump, we compromise:  When mentioning a place/person for
the first time in an "official Lojban document", use la'o, *and* assign a
normal cmene with {goi} (and also assign whatever other variables, too).
So, I might start talking about a city....

la'o .gic. Philadelphia .gic goi la filyDELfi,as. cu barda je tcadu ...

that-named-quoted "Philadelphia", referred to as that-named filydelfi,as.,
is big-and-a-city.

Philadelphia is a big city.

(because I didn't feel like doing {barda tcadu}, that's why).  Yow, you
almost caught me with {*filadelfi,as.}!

Or similarly:

la'o .gic. Margaret Thatcher .gic. goi la tatcr. zi'egoi ko'a cu bacru ca
le purlamdei zo'esa'ali'o...

that-named-quoted "Margaret Thatcher", hereafter referred to as "tatcr.",
and hereafter referred to as She1, said during the prior-adjacent-day...

Margaret T. said yesterday....

And so on.  Discussions about the meanings of the name ("New", "West", etc)
can be done either metalinguistically or even in the text normally:  You
wouldn't take the time out to bother explaining if it weren't important in
some way, most likely.

Um, no, I *don't* think doing latitude and longitude is a good plan in
general, though it might be a useful auxiliary in cases where we can't
assume the hearer has ever heard of New York...

~mark