From cowan@ccil.org Thu Oct 18 06:25:46 2007 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list llg-members); Thu, 18 Oct 2007 06:25:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from earth.ccil.org ([192.190.237.11]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.67) (envelope-from ) id 1IiVNN-0005BU-BX for llg-members@lojban.org; Thu, 18 Oct 2007 06:25:41 -0700 Received: from cowan by earth.ccil.org with local (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1IiVN6-00077j-6N for llg-members@lojban.org; Thu, 18 Oct 2007 09:25:08 -0400 Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 09:25:08 -0400 To: llg-members@lojban.org Subject: [llg-members] Re: LLG AGM 2007: New Business Message-ID: <20071018132508.GD15126@mercury.ccil.org> References: <20071016193843.GI5630@digitalkingdom.org> <20071016194330.GF28745@mercury.ccil.org> <20071016202338.GL5630@digitalkingdom.org> <20071016213405.GG28745@mercury.ccil.org> <20071016213807.GO5630@digitalkingdom.org> <20071016220537.GI28745@mercury.ccil.org> <20071016222008.GK28745@mercury.ccil.org> <4715D3E3.5000003@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <4715D3E3.5000003@gmail.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.13 (2006-08-11) From: John Cowan X-Spam-Score: 0.0 X-Spam-Score-Int: 0 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 447 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: llg-members-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: llg-members-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: cowan@ccil.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: llg-members@lojban.org X-list: llg-members And Rosta scripsit: > This is a misleading comparison. The Andamaniacal example you give is a > difference of style and discourse structure (namely, order in which > information is presented). But the normal and Andamaniacal sentences mean > the same thing, truthconditionally. Well, what I meant was that given a sentence with unquantified "le", (or for that matter any other article, though I am talking only about "le" today), under xorlo one may replace it with unquantified "lo" without changing the truth conditions, because while "le" still means +specific, "lo" is neutral as to specificity. Thus one may avoid "le" altogether, and I am declaring that I for one do not welcome this. (Fortunately, quantified "lo" and its article-less equivalent are still -specific.) > Traditional lojban usage heavy on the use of "le" always seemed > to me poor Lojban, either because the author was failing to think about > the actual meaning of their sentences, or because community usage norms > consistently flouted the official design.[*] Certainly the use of "le nu" for nonspecific events was a persistent abuse, and there are beyond doubt many places in CLL that should be fixed. > If community norms have switched to xorlo, that is quite an incredible > triumph for the community. (I say "incredible" because I'd have bet > heavily against it ever happening.) Well, for some subset of the community: arguably the subset most active in actual use of the language. > [* In talking about the official design I'm assuming that in the official > design the e/o distinction was one of specificity, and that veridicality > was a minor detail given undue prominence as a result of some early > documentation compiled by linguistically inexpert people.] Indeed. -- John Cowan http://ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org 'Tis the Linux rebellion / Let coders take their place, The Linux-nationale / Shall Microsoft outpace, We can write better programs / Our CPUs won't stall, So raise the penguin banner of / The Linux-nationale. --Greg Baker