From sentto-44114-17567-1039091029-lojban-in=lojban.org@returns.groups.yahoo.com Thu Dec 05 04:48:12 2002 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Thu, 05 Dec 2002 04:48:12 -0800 (PST) Received: from n16.grp.scd.yahoo.com ([66.218.66.71]) by digitalkingdom.org with smtp (Exim 4.05) id 18JvQG-0002oK-01 for lojban-in@lojban.org; Thu, 05 Dec 2002 04:48:08 -0800 X-eGroups-Return: sentto-44114-17567-1039091029-lojban-in=lojban.org@returns.groups.yahoo.com Received: from [66.218.67.199] by n16.grp.scd.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 05 Dec 2002 12:23:49 -0000 X-Sender: opoudjis@optushome.com.au X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_2_3_0); 5 Dec 2002 12:23:49 -0000 Received: (qmail 9955 invoked from network); 5 Dec 2002 12:23:49 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.216) by m6.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 5 Dec 2002 12:23:49 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mail017.syd.optusnet.com.au) (210.49.20.175) by mta1.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 5 Dec 2002 12:23:49 -0000 Received: from optushome.com.au (c17180.brasd1.vic.optusnet.com.au [210.49.155.40]) by mail017.syd.optusnet.com.au (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id gB5CNlC01062 for ; Thu, 5 Dec 2002 23:23:47 +1100 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Message-Id: <6710D870-084C-11D7-9FC7-003065D4EC72@optushome.com.au> X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.548) From: Nick Nicholas X-Yahoo-Profile: opoudjis MIME-Version: 1.0 Mailing-List: list lojban@yahoogroups.com; contact lojban-owner@yahoogroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list lojban@yahoogroups.com Precedence: bulk Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 23:23:47 +1100 Subject: [lojban] lo'edu'u Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII X-archive-position: 3066 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: opoudjis@optushome.com.au Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list Lojbanists, walking home tonight, I had an epiphany. And is right on lo'edu'u. And I'm going to make this part of _Lojban for Intermediates_ one day. Let me explain. Bob harrumphed at And saying lo'edu'u is too long, and And saying people are wrong to say lenu when they mean lo'edu'u. If you look at And's prose on the wiki, his predilection for lo'edu'u really sticks out unpleasantly. And then, I thought a couple of hours ago, walking to my car at the train station, what he was doing. It's forehead slappingly clear to me now. OK, what's the deal with this lo'e? It was a recent debate on jboske, and a hectic one at that, but it looks like And's myopic singulariser won over Jorge's intensional article (though they may converge yet.) Gobbledygook. OK, let me walk through it. (What I'm going to say may not contradict Jorge's lo'e, actually, but we'll defer that debate to jboske.) When you say "The lion lives in Africa"... no, let's drop that. When you say "The typical American likes baseball" what do you mean? ro merko cu nelci le kelcrbeisbolo . No, that's claiming every single one does, and that's not true. so'a merko cu nelci le kelcrbeisbolo . Kinda a true, I suppose, but it's not capturing the notion of it being typical, it being normal, it being a generalisation. Now, we have tense cmavo for that. But let's see what other gadri can do for us. loi merko cu nelci le kelcrbeisbolo . Actually no. For all the talk of Mr Water and Mr Rabbit that erstwhile Lojban pedagogy has used, masses are not in fact what you need here. A mass simply says that you cannot make the bridi claim of individuals in the group, but only in the whole group. {loi nanmu cu bevri le pipno}: not Andrew, Barry and Chris each carried the piano, but the three of them in concert carried the piano. Now, is that relevant here? Surely not. Andrew can like baseball all on his lonesome, without needing any assistance from Barry or Chris. The answer to our question, of course, is lo'e merko cu nelci le kelcrbeisbolo : The American (the typical American) likes baseball. So where does this lo'e merko d00d live? How many kids has she got? Did he cheat on his taxes last year? Do you think she'll go out with me? Now, these questions are nonsense, right? But why? For any American {ro da poi ke'a merko je prenu}, you should be able to ask how many kids they've got. Why can't I ask that about this lo'e merko d00d? Because this lo'e merko d00d isn't a person. S/he's a phantom. An abstraction, if you will. The average American may have 1.3 kids, but no one person alive has a fractional offspring. That's because the average American is a mathematical abstraction out of all the Americans out there --- the childful and the childless. Now, count all the Americans there are. Bob and John and Robin and xod and Jay and Mark and and and. They all have names; this is an extensionally defined set (meaning you can count 'em.) Now squint. Squint enough, that all the differences between these Americans fade out. What are you left with? What you're left with is an abstraction. But this abstraction, this phantom, still has some properties. It has the properties that most individual Americans normally has. So you can speak about those properties; you can make propositional claims about this phantom. But not every claim you can make of an individual American can be made of this phantom too. .i xu la bab. rirni re da .i go'i .i xu la djan. rirni re da .i na go'i .i xu lo'e merko cu rirni re da .i na go'i ... .i xu la fred. nakni .i go'i .i xu la salis. nakni .i na go'i .i xu lo'e merko cu nakni .i ba'e na'i go'i Moreover, you can count individuals; but you cannot count this phantom. When you squint, you see one abstract generalisation. re lo'e merko is meaningless. If the average American earns $50k, can the average American get together with another average American and buy Enron shares? That's meaningless. (There is such a thing as an average couple; but that's another story.) The details of what you can and cannot claim of this phantom generalisation figure are still hazy; but let's move on to clausal abstractions. Lojban is odd among the languages I know, at least, in that it treats nominalisations --- clausal abstractions --- exactly like any other sumti. In particular, you can count most sumti; they're extensional. Well, you can count nominalisations too. So far so good? You can speak of {pa cifno} and {re cinfo}; you can also speak of {pa nu cecla} and {re nu cecla}. What's so surprising about that? We say "one shooting" and "two shootings" in English. We understand them as bounded events, in particular places with particular participants, and distinguishable from each other; so Oswald and Kennedy were involved in one shooting, and Lincoln and Booth in another. So. You like swimming, ok? How many swimmings do you like? Here we have a problem. What does {mi nelci lenu mi limna} mean? "I like swimming", you might think. Think again. What would {mi nelci le merko} mean? That you love all Americans on earth? Probably not. Probably you're referring to a specific, context-salient American. One American is distinct from another; you can separate them from each other, and single out the one you like in particular. What does {lenu mi limna} mean? It doesn't mean 'swimming' in general. No sir. It means a swim. A particular swim, just as {le merko} means a particular American. What distinguishes Americans from each other? Their properties, their names, whatever. What distinguishes particular events from each other? Their times, their places, their arguments. {lenu mi limna la pacifikas de'i li 2002pi'e5pi'e1} is distinct from {lenu mi limna la atlantikas de'i li 2001pi'e3pi'e15}. "But I ain't talking about swimming in the Pacific on May Day, or in the Atlantic on the Ides of March. I'm talking about swimming in general." "Nonsense. If you have {le nu limna}, you have {le nu da limna de de'i di}. There are only specific events of swimming --- specific swims; just as there are only specific Americans. There are no such things as generalisations of events; there are only particular events holding between particular participants at particular times and places..." ... unless you squint. Conjure up in your mind all the swims you've had, real and potential. Squint away their particular details. What are you left with? You're left with a phantom abstraction --- as opposed to a concrete abstraction! --- which involves you, and water, and not much else. Because everything else is details, and you're squinting those away. What you're left with, is swimming. So. I liked my swim : .i mi nelci lenu mi limna I like swimming: .i mi nelci lo'enu mi limna Once you abstract out {lo'e nu limna} from {ro lonu limna}, you'll find there are things you can say about any particular swim, that you just cannot say about swimming in general. Just as it's meaningful to say whether the typical American likes baseball, but not whether the typical American will go out with you Friday week. So: .i do nelci lenu do limna de'i ma .i de'i li 2002pi'e5pi'e1 .i do nelci lo'enu do limna de'i ma --- .i na'i su'o da zo'u: mi nelci lo'enu mi limna de'i da Swimming ain't swims. It's a mooshy glob of swims. That's why And is saying it as lo'enu. For that matter, that's why Jorge and And have said it as tu'o nu. The whole point of squinting is to see one mooshy glob instead of five hundred sharp focus individuals. If you can still discern two or three, you're not squinting hard enough. And there's not much point in counting when there can be only one thing to count. tu'o is the non-number; it's the refusal to count. So it's been invoked in this cause too. One last step. At the last minute, Lojban introduced a distinction between {nu}, stuff that happens in the world, and {du'u}, claims about the world, concepts about what's going on. Languages sometimes distinguish between them, but not as routinely as Lojban does. If something is {nu}, it's not {du'u}; and vice versa. If you want something covering both, you use {su'u}. I doubt most Lojbanists know su'u is even there; and as I said in the lessons, I think they should, because people may well not want to make the nu/du'u distinction. So, when you know that Fred swims, you know a claim, not an event. And just like events, claims are specific; they have all their arguments filled. So you can know the propositions: {mi djuno ledu'u la fred. limna la pacifikas de'i li 2002pi'e5pi'e1}, and {mi djuno ledu'u la fred. limna la atlantikas de'i li 2001pi'e3pi'e15}, and {mi djuno ledu'u la fred. limna la .indikas de'i li 2001pi'e7pi'e14}. And then, you can squint, and induce a generalisation: {mi djuno lo'edu'u la fred. limna}. {limna ma}? The question is invalid. You're not making a claim about a particular swim, in a particular body of liquid. You're generalising. Is this tinkering? Is this casuistry? Is this pedantry? No, lojbanists. This is Lojban. The minute you let {lo'e} into the language alongside {le}, and {du'u} alongside {nu}, you create a distinction. If you ignore that distinction, you are misusing Lojban, as surely as if you say {re} instead of {pa}. English uses 'that' for {lenu}, {lo'enu}, {lo'edu'u}, {loisu'u}, and any number of other possibilities. Lojban requires a distinction. {le} presupposes you can count the referents. {nu} presupposes the referent is an event. If you always say {lenu} where you should be saying {lo'edu'u} instead, you're just calquing 'that'. You're not thinking Lojbanically. And if you wanted English... Should I have realised this was going on a long time ago? I suppose so; but when the jboskeists say this stuff, people tune out, and that's a shame. We need fluffy pedagogy to prevent this; I'm starting to think that's my real job in Lojban. (If I can't become a lecturer, I'll try the next best thing...) Am I happy about this realisation? No. It makes Lojban even nastier than I'd have liked. Then again, when I learned Lojban noone bothered distinguishing between {ka} and {nu} either, {ce'u} hadn't occurred to anyone --- and bet your bottom dollar, noone said anything but {lenu}. And what do I think now that I realise the error of my ways, and then see the language designer say he doesn't know what {lo'edu'u} means, and won't be told by a jboskeist what it means? I say he needs to learn Lojban. ;-) Is the language changing every month these days? Actually it is. Two years ago, people weren't using {ce'u}, and were using {ka} a lot more. Not because we've been tinkering with the language, but because we're understanding more of the semantics of this language, and moving steadily away from literal code substitutions of English. This will keep happening. And this is the kind of thing both formalists and Sapir-Whorfists (to use xod's recent wiki term) should welcome: Lojban not being a code for English, but making subtler, weirder differentiations. Does this mean we have to unlearn stuff? Yeah. But this is different from tinkering. This is us reading the baseline more closely, and realising its consequences more fully. This is us staying longer and longer in Lojbanistan, and starting to pick up some of the idiom. This is trumping past usage and custom; but it *is* sticking by the baseline (which trumps usage anyway), and it's what we're here for. OK. Some of you knew this stuff all along, and am wondering why I'm making this song and dance --- and why I got so much of it wrong. :-) Some of you are going to find this news, and unpleasant news at that. And you may accept this or you may reject this. But I think this does matter, and it's what should be going into _Lojban for Intermediates_ (which this was a dry run for.) Comments on pedagogy and politics welcome here; comments on technical details, to jboske please. **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** * Dr Nick Nicholas, French & Italian, University of Melbourne, Australia * nickn@unimelb.edu.au http://www.opoudjis.net * "Eschewing obfuscatory verbosity of locutional rendering, the * circumscriptional appelations are excised." --- W. Mann & S. Thompson, * _Rhetorical Structure Theory: A Theory of Text Organisation_, 1987. * **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscribe@onelist.com Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/