Message-Id: <199310071436.AA04093@eli.CS.YALE.EDU>
Date:         Thu, 7 Oct 1993 10:31:00 EDT
Reply-To: protin@USL.COM
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU>
From: Art Protin <protin@USL.COM>
Subject:      Re: Lean Lujvo and fat gismu
To: Erik Rauch <rauch>
Status: RO

lojbab asks:
> Please tell me the origin and destination for the earth's motion
> around the sun, or its rotation,
> or the journey of an airliner ....

Well, the origin of the earth's motion around the sun is still
the subject of some debate, but the destination is, barring
intervention, collision with the sun.  This would happen regardless
of the size of the sun but can be expected to happen sooner
because of the sun going nova before earth's orbit has decayed
enough to collide with a sun of it current size.

    By the time society has a word for something, it is already
more abstract than a single experience.  The notion of travel
includes many aspects.  Each instance of travel that we wish
to discuss can be simply expressed in terms of the most general notion.
All aspects of the general notion of travel have values in every
instance as long as you allow the value NULL.  In reality,
most instances of travel overlap with many other instances of
travel.  Interesting discussion/dialog about an instance involves
defining the instance sufficiently to distinguish it from all
the other overlappers, eg., the travel of the airplane from manufacture
to destruction, the travel of the crew in a day's work, the travel
of a specific passenger, the travel of an airline specified "flight",
the travel of the airplane relative to the surface of the earth,
the travel of the airplane relative to the sun, the travel of the
airplane relative to milkyway, etc.  Generally it is not important
to distinguish one from all the others, it is usually desired to
distinguish it only sufficiently for the purpose of the discussion.
For most discussions about a airplane trip that I have observed,
the route is simplified to a time interval inside the airplane
between landings.  In such cases, the route relative to the earth,
the sun, and/or the milkyway, may be unknown, unspecifiable, and
unimportant to the discussion except for the end points.  Yet,
the trip had a route.  All trips have routes.  It is inherent in
travel that there be a route.  It just may be that the specification
of the route can contribute nothing to a particular discussion of
some travel instances.  Thus, the place is left unfilled.  The
unfilled place does not need to be filled, it is not denied by
being unfilled, just unimportant to the discussion because it
is totally irrelavent or because it can be inferred or because
the total concept being conveyed requires for emphasis that it
be specified elsewhere/earlier/later.

    The examples:

        I come from France.

and

        I leave France.

are not examples of differences in travel!!!!
They are examples of differences in tense!!!!
(or in nuance).

The meaning of "I come from X" is that I or my ancestors
lived there long enough to been changed by the experience
such that the culture of X is part of my nature,
and traveled from there to here via some unspecified
and proportedly unimportant route at some equally
unspecified time in the past.

The meaning of "I leave X" is that
        a) I am in or will be in X soon
                and will leave it soon,
or
        b) I was just in X and
                and still see myself as in the travel that
                took me from there.


    thank you all,
    Art Protin


PS.  Due to work pressures, I may fail to respond to this discussion
    again.  I do not intend any other meaning to my silence.


Arthur Protin <protin@usl.com>
STANDARD DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are strictly those of the author and
are in no way indictative of his employer, customers, or this installation.