Return-Path: Message-Id: <9111020342.AA06088@relay1.UU.NET> Date: Sun Nov 3 06:56:18 1991 Reply-To: CJ FINE Sender: Lojban list From: CJ FINE Subject: Re: Lojban duplications X-To: Lojban list To: John Cowan , Ken Taylor Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Sun Nov 3 06:56:18 1991 X-From-Space-Address: cbmvax!uunet!cuvma.bitnet!LOJBAN Arthur Protin: > > Every message (a unit of communication) contains countless > "meta-messages" on an endless variety of topics. For example, > that first sentence includes: "I am alive", "this conversation > is in English", "I want you to change your view of things", etc. Yes, BUT you need to be very careful what you mean by 'contains', 'includes' - these are not the same as 'implies'. Pragmaticists distinguish 'implication' (logical or material) from 'implicature' - which is saying something like "in the social or other environment we have in common I am inviting you to conclude the following", but which can for example be explicitly overridden with no contradiction. I would suggest that 'I am alive' and 'I want you to change your view of things' are at best implicatures, and 'this conversation is in English' is a meta-statement that cannot be regarded as implied by the original in any sensible way. These distinctions are not just pedantry, but I rather think point to a resolution to this argument. I suggest (using traditional terminaology because I haven't learnt the Lojban terms yet) that: Using an explicit argument or prepositional phrase ASSERTS that the relation holds that is expressed by that argument place or preposition, and IMPLICATES that the following argument is the kind of object etc which normally holds such a relation; Leaving out a positional argument or a prepositional phrase IMPLICATES that there is a suitable, but unexpressed argument; but such implicature may be overridden by a more general implicature that the semantics of the predicate do not allow for such an argument. > And just as the null action is an action, so too the null message > is a message and the elipsed place is a place. When I don't > say where I am going it is because I feel that the express > conveys my intent better without it. It may not exist, I may > expect you to already know it, I may want to keep it a secret, > I may be getting forgetful in my old age. I think you are putting too much intention in here. There are circumstances, certainly, in which we choose every word with care, but many utterances are not thought out so precisely. There is a sense in which what you say is true, to be sure, but I think that it is often a trivial sense. > Clearly, anything that could have been hung on there, that > was not hung there, was not hung there for a reason! Just as any > places that were unfilled were unfilled for a reason. And since > we have evolved to the point that we find we need to add places > to the relations (bridi) that are not part of the stock definition, > we should see that the expressed relations are only an approximation > to what we really are thinking and talking about. As such, I > find the distinction between "klama" and "litru" very arbitrary, > undesirable, and misleading. In spite of what I have said above, I agree with you here. Kolen Fain (c.j.fine@bradford.ac.uk)