Message-Id: <MAILQUEUE2-102.931007201616.256@hylkn1.Helsinki.FI>
Date:         Thu, 7 Oct 1993 14:14:29 EDT
Reply-To: Jorge LLambias <jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU>
Sender: vilva
From: Jorge LLambias <jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Lean Lujvo and fat gismu
To:         lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu
Content-Length: 5076
Lines: 119

la lojbab cusku di'e

> If in thinking a certain Lojban thought you do not perceive
> a relevant relation with a sumti of semantics x-sub-n, you should be able
> to omit that place from the place structure of the lujvo you are coining
> to express that relationship AT THE TIME OF COINING IT.

But how can you not perceive it if it's part of the gismu's meaning? Are gismu
a relationship between all of it's places, or just a collection of relationships
between the places taken as single places, as pairs, as triplets, etc.

> If your concept truly
> doesn't include something in the relationship, you should be able to leave it
> out.

Or question yourself how come your concept doesn't include it, but the
underlying gismu does. Is it the appropriate gismu? Maybe it's a fat gismu,
because a gismu without that place would make a lot of sense?

>  If lujvo place structures are
> assumed to be "fat" for the most part, this will be the normal assumption,
> and you will have to get very long-winded in order to express more abstract
> and general concepts.

I think you are assuming that limiting the eliminations to the places that are
effectively filled gives fat lujvo, but as far as I can tell this is not the
 case.
In all the cases we've discussed so far there was only one deletion questioned,
and in many cases I argued that a place that should have been removed because
it was already filled, wasn't.

> This in spite of the fact that we seem to have biased
> the gismu list, for example, to have words/place strutures with fewer sumti
> in their structures, and hence a greater abstraction level than corresponding
> English/NL words.

What?? I don't see many gismu that would require extra places. I see a few that
could use less though.

> Why should lujvo be hyper-concrete when gismu are rather
> hyper-abstract?

They shouldn't. Abstract gismu give rise to abstract lujvo.

> And how do express the more abstract concepts when they truly
> are what you are intending (likely in poetry, analogy, and other intellectual
> endeavors)?

I'm not sure what you mean, without seeing examples.

> Moreover, when you now have these overspecified place structured lujvo, say,
> for a 2-part lujvo, and you wish to combine 2 of these lujvo in a metaphor
> to form a new lujvo-expressed concept, think of how many places you will
> have!

If it's a metaphor, it's harder to argue. Again, with an example it may be
easier. Most of the lujvo I've seen are not metaphorical, though.

> Assuming rather minimal deletion, 2 4place gismu will probably form
> a 6or 7 place lujvo.

Not really. There are a lot of deletions by filling and doubling up that
apply in most cases. Often a lujvo ends up having less places than its
components, without any need to throw away empty places.

>  Two of these will form a 10 or 12 place lujvo with
> 4 terms, most of which are NOT going to be relevant to any particular
> expression of the rtelationship expressed by the lujvo.

Examples?

>  This because not only do we not have a value
> in mind for the place in question, but if challenged, we might indeed agree
> that the relationship we DID have in mind might NOT require some value for
> the omitted place.

And all I'm asking is what happened to that place. At which point of the lujvo
making was it lost. How come the gismu is present if that place is meaningless?

> A dog-house-builder MIGHT build houses for a paritcular
> breed, but if he is just building generic doghouses, the breed place is
> truly NOT part of the concept.

Agreed, but there's no reason to go to the doghouse builder in this case.
The breed place is not part of the doghouse concept, and this because we are
using "dog", and not "dog of breed x2" to form "doghouse". I.e. we are building
the lujvo with {zerku be zi'o}.

> I thus reiterate that I think that lujvo should be relatively lean and
> broad/abstract in their simplest/shortest form, just as the gismu are, and
> more specific, and having more places, through adding more terms.

I agree with this: they should be as lean as the gismu.

>   I have heard it said that the human mind may be incapable of grasping
> more than 7 concepts at a time - I have always assumed this to mean that
> it is highly undesirable to have a predicate with more than 6 or 7 sumti
> (plus the predicate concpet itself), and even fewer if one or more of the
 sumti
> is usually abstract (hence often being comprised of more sumti/selbri within
> itself).

By principle, I dislike any gismu with more than three places. (One-placers are
also a bit silly, but often they make sense.) I also prefer to keep lujvo as
short as possible. What I don't like is to throw away places when I can't see
why they're thrown away.

> Thus I have tended to, for example, accept people's arguments for eliminating
> places broadly from the gismu list

> I would like to see the lujvo be similarly respectful of the minds of the
 people
> who will try to think about rhe concepts being expressed.

If it's not in the gismu, there's no danger of it cropping up in the lujvo.


Jorge