Subject: Re: [lojban] RECORD: containers

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 00:31:41 -0400

At 04:14 PM 06/25/2000 -0700, Jorge Llambias wrote:
>la pycyn cusku di'e
>
> >I skip over the problem (for which lb has no better solution
> >than English) of internal and external negations -- that this is
> >a bottle but not one containing something, and simply say
> >that, given we do acknowledge that ta is a bottle
>
>This is the point. If we take the place structures seriously,
>ta is actually being a botpi only when it contains something,
>a side effect of the inflated place structures.

No. What is being missed here, and may affect the RECORD statement as 
well, is that Loglan/Lojban considers potential tenses to be equivalent to 
actual tenses for purposes of defining predicates, in the absence of 
context. Thus a bottle "for" wine is one where the potential is deemed 
notable that the contents will be wine, even if there is no actual wine 
contents now. (one may argue that ANYTHING is a potential contents for a 
container, but this seemed to me a little like the use of potential tenses 
for limna and fagri - potentially all humans are swimmers, but we limit the 
term to those who actually have learned something about the process and who 
are likely to actually swim at some time or another. Potentially 
everything is flammable under some temperature and pressure in some 
atmosphere, but that is not what we would use the potential of fagri for.

>In English a
>bottle is a bottle independently of whether it contains
>something or not. In Lojban {botpi} is a relationship between
>two objects, at least in theory.

At least in POTENTIAL.

I will admit that the potential tense stuff has probably not been 
thoroughly thought out, and may play hell with semantics if applied 
consistently across the board, but that is indeed why certain 
metaphysically necessary places were built into and retained with the 
selbri even if they weren't likely to be used in statements of actual 
predicates.

>In Lojban, when there are no contents the
>object ceases the actual bottling until it contains something
>again. It continues to be a potential bottler, of course, but
>not an actual one.

But how often do you specify the "ca'a" tense that indicates that it is an 
actual one at the time of predication?

> >and being
> >good Griceans, we admit that not containing anything *of
> >relevance to the present discussion* is pretty much what we
> >mean by "empty" -- air, Coke dregs, a little water from the
> >washing up (including minute amounts of soap), and
> >mosquito turds don't count.
>
>I absolutely agree with that. What I'm saying is that when
>the bottle is empty of relevant stuff, it is not in a
>botpi relationship with anything, and thus is not properly
>an actual botpi. (I insist that it remains as a potential
>botpi, of course.)

Maybe we actually agree here, depending on what you mean by your insistence.

> >Even in a logical language, language ain't logic.
>
>So we are already giving up on predicate calculus?
>It may come to that in the end, but let us at least
>try for it, no?

What do you mean "giving up"? It is built into the structure of the 
language. You cannot speak Lojban without TO SOME EXTENT mimicking to 
forms of predicate logic. But I think pc is saying that merely mimicking 
the forms will not necessarily produce actual logical language or logic 
itself. pc has historically been a skeptic on the existence of Sapir-Whorf 
effects, so this is consistent: having the forms does not mean that they 
will be used, much less that they will be used correctly in a logical sense.

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