From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Fri Jan 05 10:40:20 2007 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Fri, 05 Jan 2007 10:40:20 -0800 (PST) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1H2tyr-0002Nq-V2 for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Fri, 05 Jan 2007 10:39:55 -0800 Received: from simba.math.ucla.edu ([128.97.4.125]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1H2tyb-0002Ml-O7 for lojban-list@lojban.org; Fri, 05 Jan 2007 10:39:53 -0800 Received: by simba.math.ucla.edu (Postfix, from userid 500) id 3BBC03BC63; Fri, 5 Jan 2007 10:39:15 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by simba.math.ucla.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2CE6F3BAA4 for ; Fri, 5 Jan 2007 10:39:15 -0800 (PST) Date: Fri, 5 Jan 2007 10:39:15 -0800 (PST) From: Jim Carter To: lojban-list@lojban.org Subject: [lojban] Re: Duty, promice etc... In-Reply-To: <3ccac5f10701051012g4a37b11fnc22ce33e68d30747@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: References: <3ccac5f10701050608x71a6381p89a54e54e2239e65@mail.gmail.com> <95093.56426.qm@web81311.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <925d17560701050934yc0c5158w7d06fb2f916dc9a@mail.gmail.com> <3ccac5f10701051012g4a37b11fnc22ce33e68d30747@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Spam-Score: -1.9 X-Spam-Score-Int: -18 X-Spam-Bar: - X-archive-position: 13497 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: jimc@math.ucla.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list On Fri, 5 Jan 2007, Cyril Slobin wrote: > What I really try to say is "You promise is silly". What does it mean? > "The action you are promised to do is silly"? "The event that you have > given a promise is silly"? "The event that you are keeping to fulfil > you promise is silly"? Nothing of this in particular and all of this > at once. I can't resist this thread... "I promise to jump off Lover's Leap if you don't marry me". If the response were "Your promise is silly", it could reasonably be interpreted in all of the ways Cyril mentioned: "Jumping off Lover's Leap is silly" (but a careful speaker would say just that, not using "your promise" to represent the event promised). "Promising to jump off the cliff is silly". That's the best interpretation. "Promising that, and then actually doing it, is even more silly". In Lojban, when a variant isn't specified explicitly all choices are possible. However, in the grammar of the sentence (your promise is silly), the predicate "silly" is applied to its first argument "your promise", and I think this has to be interpreted exclusively as "the event of you promising to jump off the cliff". I don't think it should be considered exemplary language behavior to add or subtract layers of grammar to give "you abstractly jump off the cliff" or "you actually jumped off the cliff". Sloppy or pragmatic language behavior, yes, people say that, but I don't go with the "language as she is spoke" crowd. We may have to do our best to understand garbage on input, but we should do our best to produce clean output. James F. Carter Voice 310 825 2897 FAX 310 206 6673 UCLA-Mathnet; 6115 MSA; 405 Hilgard Ave.; Los Angeles, CA, USA 90095-1555 Email: jimc@math.ucla.edu http://www.math.ucla.edu/~jimc (q.v. for PGP key) 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.