Return-Path: Message-Id: <9111010309.AA07103@relay1.UU.NET> Date: Sat Nov 2 01:38:17 1991 Reply-To: cbmvax!uunet!pucc.princeton.edu!bob Sender: Lojban list From: cbmvax!uunet!pucc.princeton.edu!bob Subject: Lojban duplications X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan , Ken Taylor In-Reply-To: usl!protin%USL.USL.COM@mitvma.mit.edu's message of Thu, 31 Oct 1991 19:40:00 EST <9111010047.AA09488@churchy.gnu.ai.mit.edu> Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Sat Nov 2 01:38:17 1991 X-From-Space-Address: cbmvax!uunet!cuvma.bitnet!LOJBAN Until Lojban Central issues a directive to the contrary, I want you all to know that when I leave a place empty I make no claim about that empty place except that I saw no reason to include it. You are not free to assume that there is even some unnamed thing in that place. When I say: mi klama I am not even admitting to having a destination! Wait a minute! You are missing the point of a predicate language! The idea is that `klama' is word that means you are talking about some relationship among a traveler, a destination, a departure point, a route and a means. The word says you are making a veridical claim of some sort about a relationship among those five entities. You may be making an incomplete claim, but that is a different issue. (It may not matter that the claim is incomplete--whether it matters is a different issue.) If you want to talk about a traveler without making any claim about destination, then you need a different word, one that only talks about traveling. Maybe lojban does not have a gismu for this. Two possibilities for the case that lojban lacks a gismu: * The dictionary makers made a mistake. * You have to invent a tanru that restricts the notion of to just the first of those entities. I think it is interesting to attempt to work within the constraints of the second possibility. I don't know if you or I can, but it is an experiment. The reason I think it is interesting is that I agree with the idea that there should be a gismu relating I think that that five part relationship really is a powerful notion, more powerful than the one part relationship of . (My reason for liking `klama' may not be the designers reason, but it suffices for me.) If I want to specify the one part relationship of , I feel I should say that I don't know anything about destination, route, etc. I think the five part relationship really is more basic and the every traveller, by the very notion of traveling, has a relationship to known or unknown, expressed or unexpressed among: As you say: Obviously I will wind up somewhere, but that is not to say that that final destination was my intention when I began or even that I had an intended destination or if I had some intended destination, that I ever reached it. I think your sentence expresses what I mean. `Obviously'. Well, if it is obvious that I will end up somewhere, then the concept of `klama' includes whether you want it to or not. Whether you think that is important or unimportant, known ahead of time or not, should be expressed or not---these are different issues. "mi klama" can stand as is even though there is a lot of unarticulated information. I hope not to associate with any fool that imagines providing an origin, a destination, a route, and a means to "mi klama" will express all there is to know about the event. This is a red herring. A veridical claim about does not claim to express *all* there is to know about the event/process. What this definition of `klama' does suggest is that somehow you cannot imagine a unless you admit the *possibility* of a . Of course, this suggestion is a Worf-Sapir type of suggestion....but that is part of the attraction of experimenting with lojban. Can you or I become fluent thinkers such that we find it hard to forget the various aspects of `klama', even in the many circumstances when some of them don't matter or we don't care to express or even think them? Robert J. Chassell bob@gnu.ai.mit.edu Rattlesnake Mountain Road (413) 298-4725 or (617) 253-8568 or Stockbridge, MA 01262-0693 USA (617) 876-3296 (for messages)