Subject: Re: [lojban] centripetality: subset vs component

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 10:31:50 -0400

At 10:22 AM 05/10/2000 +0000, Hartmut wrote:
>In real-life, a certain day is a component of a month, just like a key is
>a component of a keybox.
>
>However when I say "the 20th" I don't refer to a certain day,

When I say "the 20th" I am ALWAYS referring to a certain day. Absent the 
context, it may not be clear to you what day that certain day is.

>but to a
>large set of possible days (keys) in an infinite number of possible
>containers (months). The box-key is thus a subset or the set called
>"key".

When I say Hartmut, I am referring to a certain person, one of several 
possible people. There is a large (albeit not nearly infinite) number of 
people I could be referring to, but context usually says which one. If I 
need to add more information, I include a surname, which in all but a 
couple of Oriental languages is added at the end in human language use (I 
note that you reverse the order in your computer name, so at least you are 
consistent).

This follows the convention of putting the most critical, relevant, or 
interesting information up front. Additional clarifying information, if 
needed, is added later.

Standard order tanru are unlike names because they can have a unitary 
meaning quite distinct from the final term - not all tanru are restrictive 
(see the many forms of tanru in the appropriate chapter of the reference 
Book). In cases of restriction, Grician relevance supports putting the key 
information up front.

>We have here the notions of subset vs component, which are easy to
>confuse.

Not especially, but I don't see why either is relevant to dates which are 
names for days. It is pure convention that makes days be labelled with 
numbers or associated with month names.

>It is good language design to expand tanru by prepending rather than by
>appending, because in address constructions (including places, names,
>dates etc) the subset-specifier is usually also a container, and it is a
>necessity of human thinking to proceed from the container to the
>contained.

Why would anyone think that? The norm of human thinking is to proceed from 
the most relevant, adding less relevant information if needed for a more 
complete or accurate picture.

In particular with dates, if I already know what month it is, I will never 
need to consider the "container" that you are providing and it gets in the 
way of the information I really want which is the day number.

>Computers can use little-endian, because they are independent
>of time. Human thinking cannot procede in a little-endian manner, because
>time has only one direction.

You have a very limited mind then.

>One will always start at a certain container
>level and proced inwards to the center from there (centripetal).

No one will not. One will start at whatever level is most relevant to 
one's frame of reference, and either move in to examine details or move out 
to "look at the big picture". It is not necessary in communicating with 
you that I stop and move out to the container level and say "Hartmut is in 
Europe; in Germany; in whatever city". I treat your email address (which 
has the "container" after your username) and ignore all the irrelevant 
"containers".

>If the
>language offers only a centrifugal addressing pattern, that can only mean
>that the human mind has to make an extra effort at transposing. Such
>efforts are quite normal in natural languages, but the Logical Language
>experiment is designed to eliminate them as far as possible.

Not in the least. This is irrelevant to any design goal of the 
language. The closest I see in anything I have ever written is that Lojban 
is designed to remove restrictions on human thought. But I don't see how 
anything about this topic is a restriction on thought; the convention has 
to go one way or the other, and barring the relevance/elision criterion, I 
don't see many reasons to choose one over the other.

>I would assume that a direct juxtaposition in a tanru is permissible in
>Lojban, because the tanru structure does not imply any specific relations
>between the elements except that of delimitation (subset taking).

It doesn't even imply subset taking.

>Apparently these considerations could create a conflict with the design
>freeze. They show an inconsistency in the design of "detri". The removal
>of which will probably have to wait until some official version upgrade of
>the "Lojban Standard". Or is this not the way how Lojban is supposed to
>evolve?

Lojban is intended to NOT evolve during the baseline period, other than the 
grow in vocabulary. We will not even discuss possible changes to the 
baseline while the baseline is in effect, which will be at least 5 years 
from whenever.

lojbab
----
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org (newly updated!)