From cbmvax!uunet!CUVMA.BITNET!LOJBAN Tue Oct 22 15:00:30 1991 Return-Path: Date: Tue Oct 22 15:00:30 1991 Message-Id: <9110221744.AA22910@relay1.UU.NET> Reply-To: "61510::GILSON" Sender: Lojban list From: "61510::GILSON" Subject: More on place structures X-To: lojban To: John Cowan , Eric Raymond , Eric Tiedemann Status: RO The following message was sent to me: >Return-Path: <@ccf3.nrl.navy.mil,@pucc.princeton.edu:pthomas@arecibo.aero.org> >Date: 21 Oct 91 07:48:00 PDT >From: "PETE THOMAS" >Subject: Restriction of place structure >To: "gilson%61510.decnet" pucc.princeton.edu> >>I presume that the average Lojbanist does not have the right to coin gismu >>and therefore, if I want to use a word for a predicate that does not include >>the x3 place of a 4-place predicate, it has to be a lujvo. I do not, however, >>see how to go about that, when what I am doing is not a real modification of >>meaning in the way that a tanru is, but a restriction in scope in the sense >>I'm talking about. >Bruce, >The L.A. discussion group talked about this two days ago at our "mini-Logfest" >(three participants :-) ). First off, we found that we did not like the >implied, zo'e, inclusion of all possible places, tenses, &c. We talked about >the cultural assumption in saying E = mc^2. When I say this, I do not include >a tense, it does not matter what culture/nationality I am--as long as I define >the symbols so that they are understood, it does not matter what language I >speak it in. . .we decided that tenselessness could be construed as a cultural >bias (i.e. before the 18th century, unchanging timelessness of natural law was >not a common assumption). In other words, if speaking to someone of my own >culture, the zo'e tense I implicitly include in my utterance is one of >invariance with time. If speaking to someone of another culture that does not >share this view, the responsibility would rest with me to ensure the validity >of my statement--as the listener understands it. (In other words, if I say >that E equalled mc^2, and the listener grasps it as "at least up to yesterday" >I have failed in communicating my point). >So, we didn't come up with any solid conclusions. We decided that implicit, >unspecified places for all modifier were not a good thing for machine parsers, >that they might be acceptable for intracultural communication, but that we were >definitely uncomfortable with the idea. >Let me know what you think. >--Pete My response was that he seems to be saying the same thing I was, but he should have posted to the whole list; when I told him that, this was his reply: >Return-Path: <@ccf3.nrl.navy.mil:pthomas@arecibo.aero.org> >Date: 21 Oct 91 15:14:00 PDT >From: "PETE THOMAS" >Subject: RE: Restriction of place structure >To: "gilson" >Bruce, >feel free to forward it to the net. . .I realized after I sent it that I forgot >to CC the lojban list--and I don't have myself on "automatic CC." >Sorry about that. I agree that something is fishy about this implicit inclusion >of all possible places. I think we need to make some rational decisions about >it. . .since I am particularly interested in lojban as a machine comprehensible >language, everything that adds ambiguity or confusion potentially detracts. >Anyway, back to work for me. I'll talk to you soon. >--Pete