From rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org Sat Feb 28 13:03:22 2004 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Sat, 28 Feb 2004 13:03:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from rlpowell by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.30) id 1AxBcI-00016S-10 for lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org; Sat, 28 Feb 2004 13:03:22 -0800 Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2004 13:03:22 -0800 To: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: (no subject) Message-ID: <20040228210322.GB2894@digitalkingdom.org> References: <4040F3CB.5030503@thestonecutters.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <4040F3CB.5030503@thestonecutters.net> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.5.1+cvs20040105i From: Robin Lee Powell X-archive-position: 547 X-Approved-By: rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@chain.digitalkingdom.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-original-sender: rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-list: lojban-beginners On Sat, Feb 28, 2004 at 03:02:19PM -0500, xod wrote: > melissa@fastanimals.com wrote: > >On Fri, 27 Feb 2004, Robin Lee Powell wrote: > >>On Fri, Feb 27, 2004 at 02:35:50PM -0600, melissa@fastanimals.com wrote: > >>>These syntactically senseless sentences are possible in English and > >>>Spanish, and I seem to recall that they're possible in Swahili as > >>>well (although my Swahili is quite rusty). I suspect that they are > >>>possible in any natural language. > >>> > >>I think you're confused about the word 'possible'. > >> > > > >No, I'm not confused about the meaning of a simple and common word in > >my native language. I'm neither an idiot nor an ignoramus. > > If a sentence is "syntactically senseless", in what sense is it > "possible" in any language? It's "possible" to string any bunch of > characters together, as has already been said, but "possible" in the > context of a language generally means "syntactically valid". I'm sorry, I *really* wasn't trying to be a jerk. The word 'possible' for me has a very, very specific meaning, and "syntactically valid" is a drastic subset of that meaning. It is *possible* to say anything you want. That, to me, hasn't a single, tiny thing to do with its syntactic validity. -Robin -- Me: http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ *** I'm a *male* Robin. "Constant neocortex override is the only thing that stops us all from running out and eating all the cookies." -- Eliezer Yudkowsky http://www.lojban.org/ *** .i cimo'o prali .ui