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

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 May 2000 18:39:15 -0400

At 09:24 PM 05/12/2000 +0000, you wrote:
> > 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.
>
>Things are becoming even more comlicated.
>
>The address structures we are talking about may contain elements that
>suffice to identify the whole thing and let you skip over some containers.
>This is especially true of place addresses like "FairFax", and of names.
>It is not true of dates.

Of course it is. If context indicates we are talking about current events, 
"the 8th" is May 8, and it is in the year 2000, unless there is future 
contexts in which case it is June 8, 2000.

> > 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.
>
>At least all simultaneous interpreters feel this need.

We did not design Lojban for simultaneous interpretation.

>They have to memorize a lot of details until they arrive at a point where
>they can release them.
>The same is a case when I listen to
>
> "On 8th of May 1945 .... "
>
>although the strain on memory is not very heavy here, since the time is
>short.

I find this an interesting complaint, being that one of the major 
complaints English speakers make about learning German is the strain on the 
memory caused by deferral of compound verbs to the end.

> > 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.
>
>Again, when I listen to "Fairfax VA USA", I feel an unfriendly strain on
>my memory. I have to listen up to "USA" until I can finally recollect
>that almost already forgotten syllable "Fairfax" and place it on my mind's
>map of the USA. And how do you know that I really want to maintain such a
>detailed map of where people live? Perhaps I would be happy to just
>memorize that Lojbab lives in the USA.

To quote you from further down "then you don't need an addressing system".

Of course the corresponding argument is that you don't need a date 
"system". You just give the information someone wants, in the order that 
they are likely to find it important given the context. Voila, the Lojban 
"system" will be most commonly used.

> > Note the standard order, which again is used in almost all postal
> > systems.
>
> >From Japan through China and Russia to Germany different orders are used.
>But they are all under assimilation pressure by the US system.

The usages predate the rise of the US as a superpower. The International 
Postal Union, so far as I know, was not dominated by the US when it was 
founded.

>We are, I hope, analysing the situation from the communication
>perspective, not from the speaker perspective.

In the case of Lojban, we already have the dictum that it is the speaker's 
job to anticipate the information that the listener is likely to want and 
to understand based on the context.

> > 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.
>
>Again you insist on thinking from the lazy speaker's viewpoint.

I am thinking from a lazy listener's standpoint. When listening, I have a 
short attention span, and don't like to wait (or wade) through irrelevancy.

>Of course, a lazy speaker will first assumes a narrow frame of reference
>and then try out how far outward he has to go.

The good speaker will make an intelligent guess about what context demands, 
and not provide extraneous information, but be prepared to provide it if asked.

> > >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?
>
>Then he gets the redundant information at the beginning rather than at the
>end.

If it is redundant and it is at the end, he doesn't have to listen because 
he already has the key information.

> > 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.
>
>I contest that even for written language.
>But for oral speech it is even clearer that you don't listen to
>
> four thousand three hundred and eighty seven point three nine four ...
>as a whole.

In Russian they apparently do. I have not seen Russian abbreviate years, 
or say them other than spelled out in full like above. English of course 
breaks years down into two parts, with the century places spoken as a 
separate unit so that it can be skipped/dismissed if irrelevant.

> You might even stop collecting more information after having
>noticed that it is more than four thousand.

Not likely if we are talking dates. If the listener only wants the century, 
then giving the date to any greater significance is drowning him in 
irrelevance.

>So you will be glad that the
>number is in big-endian order.
>
>There are language habits of putting numbers into little-endian (like
>"fourteen"), but that only works as long as nobody is making serious use
>of numbers.

I guess since these usages habituated themselves into number words, among 
the most conservative forms of a language, then people must not make 
serious use of numbers when they are working with language.

> (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.)
>
>If you want to use the information, you will have to manipulate it.

I don't manipulate dates, but memorize them whole or not at all.

> Only
>by manipulating it can you hope to be able to memorise it. Any mental
>training will tell you that.

Doesn't match my experience.

> > I don't sort history dates.
>
>Do you never subtract 1.9.1939 from 8.5.1945?

No. They used to teach date subtraction when I was a kid, but no longer.

> Subtracting is just one of
>many kinds of comparisons. It is quite unpleasant to first subtract the
>days, then the months and then the years.

yet, when we subtract, at least as taught in the US, we start at the little 
end. So also if I were to subtract the above dates. That is what they 
teach, when they teach it here.

>Whenever you want to get a clear picture of what happened during some
>duration of time, you will compare and sort dates.

But that is not the usual reason for providing a date. The usual reason is 
as a name for a time period or event, and it is a unitary concept.

> > What's good enough for most postal systems is good enough for me. As
> > I said, Lojban is not a reform movement.
>
>That amounts to saying "The ways of bureaucracy are good enough as a
>system for organising my thinking. They will certainly be proven superior
>by the S.W. hypothesis".

Lojban is attempting to test the SWH, not to assume it.

> > 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.
>
>They are rather based on the inertia of social conventions.

And I have no interest in changing social convention. If it happens, then 
it will happen, and that might be evidence for SWH.

>a little-endian address starts at the speaker's side and proceeds outward
>to look for the common container.

If needed. If not needed, then it stops. And it starts at the speaker's 
perception of the listener's needs (hopefully the speaker has some such 
perception, or why is he bothering to talk).

> >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?
>
>It largely does.

But as we have noted, the date structure in most languages matches the 
English structure, or reverses the day and month.

> > English adjective-noun corresponds to tanru. But we are little-endian
> > in dates and addresses.
>
>(1) French/Latin is at the basis of many English patterns, although they
> are also verbalized by English non-tanru: 5th of May.
>(2) English has been tending away to big endian (e.g. May 5th) while
> French hasn't
>
> > Language evolves by subconscious instinct, not by conscious manipulation.
>
>Language is determined by social conventions, which of course also depend
>on the instinct of a lot of people.

Assuming SWH.

> These conventions are tacit and below
>the level of conscious planning, but they have a life of their own and do
>not directly reflect individual's subconscience. And they can be raised
>to a conscious level, if enough people in the language community want it
>to happen.

That is explicitly against the concept of using Lojban to test SWH, which 
refers to subconscious links between culture and language. Conscious 
manipulation to change convention goes against the point of the language, 
something I was convinced of much earlier in the project regarding the base 
12 time reform proposal in the original draft textbook.

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