Received: from ELI.CS.YALE.EDU by NEBULA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Thu, 30 Sep 1993 05:34:58 -0400 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by eli.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Thu, 30 Sep 1993 05:34:54 -0400 Message-Id: <199309300934.AA00293@eli.CS.YALE.EDU> Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 6167; Thu, 30 Sep 93 05:33:12 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 5198; Thu, 30 Sep 93 05:23:03 EDT Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1993 05:20:47 -0400 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: response to John(lojbab) on sarcu X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch Status: RO X-Status: X-From-Space-Date: Thu Sep 30 01:20:47 1993 X-From-Space-Address: @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET LL> mi'e djan. kau,n LL> .i la lojbab cusku di'e LL> LL> > sarcu - JCB's 1975 equivalent appears to have a du'u (neither nu nor LL> > object) defined for x1 (though he had no real way to express a du'u). LL> LL> I read L1 4th ed. pp 198-99 as meaning that JCB believes that all LL> indirect statements are in fact event descriptions in Loglan. This is LL> a defensible position, but one which I believe leads to more LL> confusions than it is worth. I asked Nora about this in the few minutes I saw her today. She thinks that there is a difference in abstraction levels between a lenu and a ledu'u, but that the language as designed does not and cannot easily be made to distinguish between two levels of abstraction in everyday usage, even if people were able to think about it clearly (which I can't). There is already enough difficulty in using a "le fasnu" which is an abstraction but doesn't look like one, and a "le fatci" which is a second level abstraction but doesn't look like one. Lojban is the first language to even make sumti- raising a significant concept in its surface structure, I suspect, but it may be that we will need fluent Lojbanists who are comfortable with thinking in/ about levels of abstraction to design a second-order Lojban that can make the distinctions implicitly. Note that Colin often says that Lojban makes the distinction between sets, masses, and individuals mandatory. By the above reasoning this is also not true. "le se cmima" is a set, but doesn't look like one, and "le gunma" is a mass and doesn't look like one. Too much of these distinctions is tied up in the the too-unsystematic, too idiosyncratic, and unbaselined and continuously evolving place structures. Thus I will not push for an explicit or mandatory distinction between du'u and nu levels of abstraction in usage, even if there probably is one. This will undoubtedly lead to some abstraction level confusion in the case of words like sarcu. I disagree with JCB as John reads him that all indirect statements are events, since we CAN and DO make distinctions between events, and events occurring But I suspect that we can live with some degree of muddying where it will occur, just as we live with the results when people forget to mark sumti-raising in their Lojban. (Whether the computer will be able to live with it, is less clear). lojbab