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

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 May 2000 07:25:59 -0400

At 10:08 PM 05/11/2000 +0000, PILCH Hartmut wrote:
> > >Here only the Oriental language have a habit that is conformant to human
> > >thinking: putting the important thing up-front.

The bottom line is that we are disagreeing as to which is the "important" 
information. I am claiming that the important information is whatever the 
listener does not know, which is context dependent, with the context 
hopefully known equally well to the speaker as to the listener.

Given this, your argument following fails.

> Given that language evolved the other way more often, and language is often
> > (though not always) a medium of thought, I see no basis for the claim that
> > human thinking is confined to one direction, and every reason to 
> believe it
> > can go both ways because that is how the languages used to express thought
> > evolved. Given that we are less than understanding of human cognition,
> > this claim is even more astounding.
>
>Speech is bound to time and time is uni-directional. Or are you capable
>of time travel?

The bottom line is that neither I nor anyone I know seems to feel a need to 
switch things around that you feel. Therefore no time travel nor switching 
is necessary to human thought.

>But in a more individualistic society, people are no longer predominantly
>referenced by family. That is why the American habit of using "Nora" even
>in such a non-intimate circle as this forum is very modern, and may seem
>strange to Asians and Europeans, who may feel that Americans are
>aggressively tearing down distance and pretending to be on intimate terms
>with people, with whom polite distance, i.e. relating to one another in
>terms of a stratified address system with different layers of closeness,
>as in traditional society, would be more honest and appropriate.

English lost the you/thou distinction for distance as well as 
singular/plural, which other languages retain, several hundred years ago, 
and has been a very informal language ever since.

Lojban permits whatever level of formality you wish.

>But, as I said, the American pattern is quite well suited to modern
>reality and especially to Internet reality. The "lojbab" pattern of
>artificial naming is even more suited to the latter.
>
>We have here a concurrence of several patterns (individualistic vs
>stratified), while with dates and places there is only one pattern: a
>stratified one.

Sorry, but around here I say I live in Fairfax, whereas with distance, I 
say I live in Fairfax VA, or even Fairfax VA USA. Note the standard order, 
which again is used in almost all postal systems. If you already know that 
Fairfax is in VA or the USA, the redundant information is unimportant, 
container or not, and goes later.

> > Language users tend to abbreviate to the shortest form that gets the
> > information across.
>
>Again, your thinking proceed from the user than from the recipient. For
>the debat about whether a certain language design is appropriate to the
>requirements of human thinking, the latter is far more important.

Per above, if I am the recipient, and I already know the container 
information, it is not important at all. Thus its importance is context 
dependent.

> > They then add information if the information is not
> > seeming to communicate. By the nature of time sequence, that clarifying
> > information has to be added after the initial information. This tendency
> > would probably have evolved more in face to face communication where
> > communication failure is made evident by body language - I say Nora, 
> and if
> > you look confused, I add "LeChevalier" or "my wife". The clarifying
> > information has to come afterwards since I cannot unsay "Nora" to prepend
> > LeChevalier.
>
>It has to come afterward from the speakers perspective. Why? Precisely
>because speach is confined in time and time is unidirectional.
>
>But leftward expansion is perfectly possible. From the listener's
>perspective it is easier if the expansion comes first.

Except that because of the unidirectionality of time, there is no way of 
knowing that the expansion is needed until it is too late. I say "the 
25th" and you look at me confusedly, and I say "of June"; I cannot go back 
and expand before the date. Additional information has to be ADDED, and 
cannot be prepended.

> > >If there are several possible Hartmuts, then 'Pilch' is the critical part.
> > >If I am already in the Pilch family, then 'Pilch' is no part at all,
> > >because people will call me by the given name.
> >
> > But if I do not know which is critical, I will choose one, and then add 
> the
> > other if needed for clarity.
>
>You are still clinging to the time-confined speaker's perspective.

How so? There are three choices - I can choose one and add the other for 
clarity, which because time is unidirectional means that I have to add 
afterwards, OR, I can say both all the time, which includes information 
that is redundant much of the time, OR I can make my best guess as speaker 
as to what information the listener seeks and say both sometimes (in some 
order) and say only the one other times, adding the other as needed (in 
which case the order is determined by the time direction implicit in 
adding). The 3rd choice, under your argument, will lead to both orders 
being said at different times, which is surely more work for a listener 
than a single order.

> > In the case of dates, if we are uncertain how much
> > information is needed, we would be prone to use the shortest information
> > first, which is the day number (assuming that the month is expressed by
>
>for the listener, starting from the outer containers provides more
>freedom. He can stop listening as soon as he finds that the achieved
>level of detail is enough. E.g. if I say, using a date translative
>"dato":
>
> XX was born dato year 1976 month 08 day 15
>
>then the listener can decide that "197x" is all he wants to know and stop
>listening to the rest.

But what if the listener already knows the 197x and doesn't need/want to 
listen to it?

>If I say
>
> XX was born dato day 15 month 08 year 1976
>
>he must collect uninteresting details until he arrives at the end,

I cannot think of many instances where the day and month are uninteresting 
but the year is, except perhaps in a large-scope history course.

> and he
>even has to switch back and forth between big endian (numbers like 1976,
>which use big endian for very good reason -- you wouldn't argue to
>reintroduce the Roman numbering system, would you?)

Oh, you are observing that numbers are big-endian. But I contend that they 
are nothing of the sort. They are words, units of meaning that the brain 
processes as a whole, without considering the breakdown into 
symbols/phonemes. (Likewise I suspect that dates and addresses and names 
are usually taken as single units despite being written as multiple words, 
and are not switched around or manipulated or anything else in most 
people's brains.)

> > >You can easily verify that by sorting a name list. The critical thing
> > >comes first in sorting. How do you sort? By surname or by given name?
> >
> > That is thinking like a computer again. Human beings don't sort name
> > lists. They communicate information, usually in the shortest form 
> possible
> > consistent with clarity.
>
>They also sort them. Try remembering a given set of history dates.

I don't sort history dates.

>Also, you seem to be confusing computers and man-computer interfaces.
>The latter use human language conventions.

Not always.

> > Depends. Ultimately the house number, but if they don't get it to the zip
> > code first, the house number won't do much good. Yet the US Post Office
> > wants the zip code at the end, and not the beginning even though they sort
> > first by zip code.
>
>The US Post Office follows an entrenched language convention without ever
>questioning it.

What's good enough for most postal systems is good enough for me. As I 
said, Lojban is not a reform movement.

> > You are presuming that everyone transposes in the direction that you
> > do. We don't.
>
>Who is "we" ?
>If the US Post Office didn't transpose, it wouldn't be able to deliver a
>single letter. And also, if you don't transpose dates you can't compare
>them and your memory for them will be like a sieve.
>
>When asked: When did WW II end, how do you proceed in thinking?
>
>Do you first say:
>
> On the 8th
>
>?
>Or
>
> In 1945
>?

I would either say "in 1945" because that is the information that people 
want, or I say "May 8 1945" or "8 May 1945" depending on my listener's 
likely preference. I remember it as May 8, 1945 (I believe Americans 
actually celebrate May 7).

(Actually I remember it as August 14 1945, because we were still at war 
with Japan, although that is the day they agreed to surrender, and they 
actually surrendered some day in September).

The bottom line is that if I need to remember more information than "1945", 
I keep the day month information in my mind first, in part because it is 
the harder to remember.

> > > > complete or accurate picture.
> > >
> > >The most relevant part is the outermost container that is still needed for
> > >restricting the meaning. In order to find a point in space/time, I need
> > >to narrow it down from some radius, which depends on where I stand.
> >
> > The most relevant information is the most restrictive information, because
> > the "outermost container" may be totally irrelevant because obvious.
>
>As I already said repeatedly, if it is obvious, it will either not be
>there at all (in case of good speaker-listener consensus) or the listener
>will treat it like a recapitulation of something he already knows

which I contend is not listener friendly because it is putting unimportant 
information first (unimportant because it is already known).

> > >The western centrifugal addressing is of course based on language habits,
> >
> > and language habits came at one point from thought habits.
>
>at what point?
>when the cave man started arriving at the 2nd level of articulation?

We cannot know. We just know that all language patterns are based on human 
thought. That is because they cannot be based on any other kind of thought.

> > Not in the least. Almost no one who uses email these days has any thought
> > of uucp. I see [email-masked], and the order is the opposite from that of
> > uucp.
>
>That is because normal email addresses are more humanized than uucp
>addresses.

i.e. they match human thought patterns rather than computer thought 
patterns. Email addresses are not similar to any other kinds of addresses, 
so their ordering must be based on new human thinking (as opposed to 
caveman articulation).

> The uucp form is a very good man-machine interface convention,
>and the UK for a long time insisted on writing email addresses like
>
> [email-masked]

But not
uk.ac.cambridge.cs:john

which would be what your argument would predict.

And indeed, why was UUCP changed at all, if it was a good system.

> > If talking to someone else within a2e.de, presumably you would just
> > have to say "phm" to get to you, and that is the ultimately essential
> > information in picking you out.
>
>For the listener / forwarder, the toplevel domain is essential for getting
>started. Whether one wants to continue and up to which stage one wants to
>go on (a2e? phm?), is a secondary question. If you want to go on up to
>phm, then you also must first go to de.

Not if I am already at a2e.de

> > ONE part of the language has leftward expansion. All the rest is 
> rightward.
>
>This one part is the part that is at the origin of date structure
>conventions in all languages that I know of.

Then why doesn't it match the order patterns for those languages? English 
adjective-noun corresponds to tanru. But we are little-endian in dates and 
addresses.

> > It is our intent to maintain the baseline until there is a large enough
> > speaker base that ONLY natural language evolutionary processes will be
> > possible.
>
>I have difficulty with the very concept of "natural" here. Language is
>convention, and conventions are made by humans and subject to ethical
>judgements.

Language evolves by subconscious instinct, not by conscious manipulation.

> The talk about "naturalness" is essentially itself an ethical
>statement. It translates into: "I refuse responsibility for the
>conventions I choose. I decide to go with the tide and I don't allow
>anybody to reproach me for that."

Fine. Lojban is among other things a linguistics experiment. We abide by 
the ground rules of linguistics, which assumes that human language is 
instinctive, and those aspects of human language that can be consciously 
designed are by that fact not part of the language instinct and therefore 
less interesting.

>You could just as well claim that monarchy is natural. And people have
>always claimed it, until democracy (social contract based politics) became
>a reality. Confucian scholars said "Just as there is only one sun on
>heaven, there can only be one Emperor on the earth". And they devised a
>whole system of "natural law" (tian1li3), which modern philosophers
>renounce as a typical "naturalistic fallacy".
>
>The talk about "natural language development" is also a naturalistic
>fallacy.

Argue with linguists.

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