From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Thu Sep 29 10:05:20 2005 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Thu, 29 Sep 2005 10:05:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.52) id 1EL1qI-0005Jn-Ue for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Thu, 29 Sep 2005 10:05:11 -0700 Received: from web81303.mail.yahoo.com ([206.190.37.78]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with smtp (Exim 4.52) id 1EL1qG-0005Jf-1x for lojban-list@lojban.org; Thu, 29 Sep 2005 10:05:10 -0700 Received: (qmail 74953 invoked by uid 60001); 29 Sep 2005 17:05:05 -0000 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=sbcglobal.net; h=Message-ID:Received:Date:From:Subject:To:In-Reply-To:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding; b=R1AThPJA1c9toVlOj9pOcT3jIOm1wqVnKOZbDe8O7dDwprxtLvv7ERj6HtHS5EcguDYegExa4WblCfZQzXk8jIVKmcZa08K4O2yCpO5tzbQ8MSWQ/9o3bA8WQnbj4s9C7zMemTPDwxXtXKcCqILVHHzUD1VFTXH1iN0gxv0zzdI= ; Message-ID: <20050929170505.74951.qmail@web81303.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [68.88.34.50] by web81303.mail.yahoo.com via HTTP; Thu, 29 Sep 2005 10:05:05 PDT Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2005 10:05:05 -0700 (PDT) From: John E Clifford Subject: [lojban] Re: xorlo podcast To: lojban-list@lojban.org In-Reply-To: <925d175605092815537cb9a629@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Spam-Score: -1.3 (-) X-archive-position: 10675 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: clifford-j@sbcglobal.net Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list I don't expect xorxes to keep track of all my quirks; I certainly don't of his. However, I find his claim not to know what version of {lo} I am talking about somewhat less than candid. We have been discussing {lo} for almost as long as xorxes has been dealing with Lojban and very intensely again over the last couple of years -- especially since the official xorlo proposal was put forth -- both on these forums and in private communication. The technical details of prelo -- admittedly a new term since I got tired of writing "the previously acccepted version of {lo}" but one introduced with what was in context an adequate explanation -- were put up on the wiki and xorxes commented on that paper (http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Lojban%20Formulae) in some detail. xorxes was active in the creation of prelo and at one time seemed to say he was using it (though I suspect that what he was using was an early version of xorlo -- they hard to tell apart except in details that may not turn up for a while). Admittedly it has been almost a month since the last go-round on {lo}, but I -- with my notoriously bad memory -- still remember most of the details of xorxes' weird scheme. I would expect the same in return. --- Jorge Llambías wrote: > On 9/28/05, John E Clifford > wrote: > > You know, I don't think I've ever seen this > > particular construction before, so I forgot > the > > {lu'u}. In fact, I don't think I've ever used > > {lu'u} though I should have seen the > ambiguity > > (well, not in Lojban, of course) as I wrote > it. > > So maybe it is not quite automatic after all. > > {lu'u} is rare, yes, I don't think I've seen it > much > either. Probably because > la'e/lu'e/tu'a/lu'a/lu'i/lu'o/vu'i > are themselves rare. Except for {la'e} in {la'e > di'u}, if > they all disappeared I probably wouldn't miss > them. Working on somewhat different material, I have found uses for most of these, some of them rather frequently (the devices for moving between bunches and masses and even occasionally those involving sets). There are other sets of things (the typesetting cmavo, for example) that I would see dropped much more readily. > > Well, of course, your {mi terpa lo jukni} > doesn't > > exactly mean "I fear spiders" either, since, > if > > it were true as written, you would spend your > > entire life in terror because there are > spiders. > > I don't think {terpa} means "x1 spends their > life in > terror because there is x2". Compare with > {prami}: > {mi do prami} doesn't mean that I'm in a > permanent > state of bliss because you exist, and similarly > {mi do terpa} doesn't mean I spend my entire > life > in terror because you exist, and the same goes > for spiders. At least that's how I understand > {terpa}. As you well know, I do not think that terpa means anything like that (nor did I say it did). The situation described is the result of the simple {mi terpa lo jukni} being true: since you have an unconditioanl fear of spiders, you would then be afraid of any situation involving spiders, including their bare existence, so, since they exist, you must be in constant fear. This is the reason for insisting that {terpa} and many other brivla take abstracts as arguments in Lojban in spite of the fact that English -- and most other languages I can think of -- take apparently concrete expressions (of course, in xorlo {lo jukni} is abstract in fact, but that is a differnt point). The point about {prami} is an interesting one, which I can't find having been raised before. {prami} is labelled to take both objects and events as arguments. Afirst look at cases seems to point to the distinction being a specific generic distinction {mi prami la miumium} vs. {mi prami tu'a lo mlatu}. Of course, this may just be a reflection of the convention about allowing things that are known to exist and to be the target of whatever is the predicate to be presented without the {tu'a} -- since fronting is valid. But we would probably also say {mi prami la barbarelas), mentioning a nonexistent object. Of course, this may be handled by any of several conventions (probably the expanded domain works best here -- and allows fronting and generalization). In addition, we feel intuitively that our love for our beloeved is not a love for various events in which she participates but for *her,* different in kind from that for events and even generic references. However, {prami} is eventually worked out. It does seem that {terpa} should be worked out in a similar way -- although the intuition about fearing someone rather than their acts is somewhat weaker in this case. > > > > I took "prelo" to be CLL-lo, that's the one > > > xorlo replaced. > > > > Wrong-o+, as you well know. No one really > used > > CLL-lo in this century. > > Huh? CLL was published in 1997, so in a sense > most of its use > was in this century. {lo} = {su'o lo} predates > CLL by a good > bit, it was already in place at least in 1994 > when I started with > Lojban. And it was used, by me and others, this > century and last. Well, CLL codified practices and pronouncements from earlier, so it was used before it appaered. Indeed, my recollection is that the shift to prelo took place before or soon after CLL appeared (it existed in various forms for some time before publication). {lo broda} = {su'o lo ro broda} goes back to Loglan (before 1975, probably before 1960, but I can't check now). Dealing with that given went in at least two steps 1) dropping the official default quantifiers both inside and out and 2) changing the implicit quantifiers on {lo} to match those on {le}, {lo broda} = {ro lo su'o broda} (before you took the further step of reinterpeting the the internal quantifier as predicative and the external one as multiplicative). Both of the changes were in place by 2000 and you appeared to claim to be suing them at that time (but, in retrospect, I can see that you were already going beyond them to early versions of xorlo). the reasons for the shift were many, but the central one was just that we used the sense of the new version several items of magnitude more often than the old one, that is, we talk about bunches of brodas much more often than we talk about all brodas. > > The problems with > > practical applications and the differences > from > > {le}, that worked about right, led to the > > discussions which reached some agreement > about > > how to proceed (getting that official was one > > spring to BPFK, in fact). On the > technicality > > you are correct; xorlo is the new *official* > > Lojban {lo} > > (Not quite yet, but hopefully some time soon.) I, on the other hand, think that that would be a cataclysm from the logical point of view (which is my main interest in all this), achieved (if that is the word) with no visible gain in any respect, except to legitimize some ancient solecisms (and I don't see that as a gain in any real sense). > > but as the operant system it replaces > > the intermediate prelo -- which you also > largely > > created. > > Since prelo is a new term you just came up > with, I couldn't > have known what you meant by it. And I still > don't. There was > a lot of discussion before xorlo jelled, but I > don't recall any > specific intermediate proposal that deserves a > name. See earlier comments. > > > > Is {mi terpa tu'a lo jukni} = {mi terpa > tu'a ro > > > lo jukni} > > > in prelo? > > > > > > What would the understood predicate be > like? > > > > I would suppose so, though I haven't thought > > through the consequences. Well, it isn't > > technically an understood predicate just an > > unspecified one. To make it true, I would > > suppose that generally, in both cases (since > they > > are pretty much equivalent), it would be > > something like "I see x" or "x touches me" or > "x > > bites me" or whatever your fear really is of. > > But "I fear spiders" can't be "I fear that for > all x which > is a spider, x touches me". If anything it > would be > closer to "I fear that for at least one x which > is a > spider, x touches me". > Well, if you have really been paying so little attention (which would probably explain some of the odd things you say), {lo jukni} = {ro lo su'o jukni} does in fact amount to "for some x, x is is a spide and ...," literally, every member of some bunch of spiders, where -- in prelo -- the "some" is buried to prevent the question "Which bunch?" To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.