Return-Path: Message-Id: <9110151946.AA19200@relay1.UU.NET> Date: Tue Oct 15 16:08:30 1991 Reply-To: John Cowan Sender: Lojban list From: John Cowan Subject: Re: arguments of verbs of motion X-To: lojban To: John Cowan , Eric Raymond , Eric Tiedemann In-Reply-To: <9110141853.AA08076@relay1.UU.NET>; from "And Rosta" at Oct 14, 91 6:44 pm Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Tue Oct 15 16:08:30 1991 X-From-Space-Address: cbmvax!uunet!CUVMA.BITNET!LOJBAN la .and. rostas. cusku di'e > This is undeniably long-winded, but I wish to make the point that these > are the only necessary arguments. I disagree with John Cowan (I think it was) > and lojban in that I don't believe there is such a thing as motion without > a destination, as distinct from motion without *specified* destination. The point is that Lojban calls that kind of motion "litru", and of course such a path may be closed, without beginning or end (example: the Earth's orbit around the Sun). "klama", on the other hand, describes the kind of motion that does have a beginning and an end, whether or not specified by the speaker. So "klama" vs. "litru" makes a semantic contrast: "motion over a path with beginning and end (and a means)" vs. "motion over a path possibly without a beginning or an end (with a means)". > Extending the discussion, it is the case that almost every action may or > may not involve the use of an instrument. Surely it is mad to duplicate > every action verb in the lexicon in order to show whether an instrument > is or isn't involved. True, and that's why we have the "extra arguments" mechanism, usually called BAI places after the prototype word of the semantic category of extra-argument flags. ("bai" = roughly "compelled by..."). "With instrument" would be marked by "sepi'o": mi kakpa zo'e loi dertu sepi'o lemi canpa I dig something-unspecified from-the-mass-of dirt with-instrument my shovel. > I realize that Lojban is the way it is, and not still being designed, so > it is as unreasonable of me to criticize it as would be to criticize > Tagalog, so please interpret my critical comments as requests for the > rationale to be explained. 1) One of the points still under construction is the "place structures", the sentences of the form "x1 comes/goes to destination x2 from origin x3 via route x4 using means x5" that explain what predicates have what arguments. We have tentative versions of these for the 1300 gismu, but no really comprehensive review of them has been done and they will probably not be fully stabilized until the language has been in use for some time. 2) The historical roots of the gismu list go back over 30 years. The tendency has always been to add words to it rather than to remove them, and so some stubs remain in the system that are of limited utility. The list does not attempt to exhibit a complete and comprehensive semantic theory which hierarchically partitions the entire semantic space of human discourse; the effect aimed at is rather a blanketing of semantic space. -- cowan@snark.thyrsus.com ...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan e'osai ko sarji la lojban