From <@FINHUTC.HUT.FI,@SEARN.SUNET.SE:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET> Mon Mar 8 17:18:22 2010 Return-Path: <@FINHUTC.HUT.FI,@SEARN.SUNET.SE:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET> Received: from FINHUTC.hut.fi by xiron.pc.helsinki.fi with smtp (Linux Smail3.1.28.1 #14) id m0ozLKp-0000PYC; Tue, 16 Nov 93 10:00 EET Message-Id: Received: from FINHUTC.HUT.FI by FINHUTC.hut.fi (IBM VM SMTP R1.2.2MX) with BSMTP id 4105; Tue, 16 Nov 93 10:00:34 EET Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE (NJE origin MAILER@SEARN) by FINHUTC.HUT.FI (LMail V1.1d/1.7f) with BSMTP id 4104; Tue, 16 Nov 1993 10:00:34 +0200 Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE (NJE origin LISTSERV@SEARN) by SEARN.SUNET.SE (LMail V1.2a/1.8a) with BSMTP id 2033; Tue, 16 Nov 1993 08:59:43 +0100 Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1993 02:58:54 -0500 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: response on old posting - lujvo-making TECH/PHILOSOPHY (long) To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu Content-Length: 12091 Lines: 218 I may have finally (re?-)crystallized in my mind what it is I don't like about the evolution of the lujvo-place-structure effort that Nick and others have worked on. I support the work that is being done - it is giving useful analytical techniques that will in turn lead to more natural, quick, expansion of the lujvo vocabulary in the language. On the other hand, I see a danger of overanalysis and overprescription which will straightjacket people learning and using the language, especially those who have not mastered the techniques being described, and/or who don't know all the place structures. Cowan weighed in on zi'o and place deletion in lujvo over a month ago as follows, responding to an anonymous source: >Lojbab replied to his correspondent thus: >>There is every expectation that some places will fall off from disuse, >>but this is what language evolution is about. If the place falls off, >>though, under the definitions of predicate logic, it is a different >>predicate. It has different truth conditions, etc. All of predicate >>logic is based on the foundation that two predicates are not identical >>if they have different numbers of or sets of arguments. I can't change >>this by fiat even if I wanted to, and Lojban has to be concsistent with >>predicate logic to have the claim of being a "logical language". > >This is true only if the place really goes extinct as opposed to being >almost never filled (which is the status of the x2 place of "gerku" >anyway: how often do we think of "gerku" as a 2-place relationship >between an individual dog and its species/breed?). I think it is >entirely safe to let such places maintain a shadowy existence, perhaps >being filled only in exceptional circumstances. Once we officially >delete them, there is no going back. > >In sum, I am becoming more and more convinced that the whole idea of >"deleting a place because it's irrelevant to the [English or other NL] >concept" is the most stinking of red-herrings. We should remove only >places that clearly overlap other places or that are implicitly filled >by other lujvo members taken as events (in belenu-lujvo, e.g.). This argument has the problem backwards. Indeed for examples that we use NOW, we are talking of deleting places to match a natlang concept. But in pure Lojban thought, without recourse to translation, we want to be able to freely create relations between concepts. So when I want to talk about a motion predicate CONCEPT that is in my mind, one that links a thing moving, a destination, and let us say a means of locomotion, and I wish to make no other implications of relation than these three things, how do I express it. The concept is similar to that of 'arrival' and I would use that as the keyword, just as I use 'leave' for 'cliva', but these are Lojban predicates, and not translations of the English words, or necessarily mappings to English concepts (there are 'leavings' that are not 'nu cliva'; perhaps there are 'nu cliva' that are not 'leavings', though I'm not sure I could come up with an example). The problem that resulted in zi'o is how to build a predicate that relates exactly the sumti you want, making no implications you don't want. This seems vital in logical discourse. It is the opposite side of the coin from the insistence that a klama always has the five defined places. We then turn from this problem to the corresponding one for lujvo-making. Thinking in Lojban, I conceive of a concept. I try to make a lujvo for it. But the 'fat lujvo' advocates that would insist on all places being present, mean that the choice of almost any gismu to add into my (presumably lean) concept, will add one or more extraneous places to the representation of my concept. Now I think it GOOD that Lojban force me to consider whether, for example, a dog house maker has in mind a particular breed of dog. But if he does not, and in fact the house is intended for 'loi gerku' of whatever species happens to end up using it - or maybe no dog will actually end up using it, and the house is just there to LOOK like a dog might use it (with a nice BEWARE OF DOG sign posted), then the fact that I can theoretically fill the place with 'loi se gerku' is really rather pointless (indeed, this is one obvious criterion where Nick might specifically identify possible lujvo place deletion - when the value of the place is 'loi [the corresponding gismu place]' without any restriction. Another quote, this time from Jorge at about the same time >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? I want lujvo-makers to _conceive_ first, then make lujvo to match their conceptions. I don't think they should be constrained by our ad hoc, often arbitrary, and probably cultrually-biased decisions about gismu place structures. I also don't want them to be forced to either go to a natlang and argue from the principles of that natlang what the Lojban place structure should be, or be forced to leave all places present just because it make lujvo-interpretation easier (which I doubt would be the case anyway, if too many places hang around). When you are making a lujvo, it should be irrelevant whether the gismu you are making it from is 'fat'. The lujvo is NOT the gismu; it is a different, albeit (hopefully) related word. >> 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? The place wasn't "lost" to me because that isn't how >I< make lujvo. The gismu suggests a meaning - that is the nature of metaphor. There is no particular likelihood that some other gismu will have the same place structure but one less place, and you shouldn;t be compelled to try to find one - especially when you are making a lujvo on a pattern-transfer basis, as I suspect many will be. A similar argument I've often seen (no quote handy), especially in discussions between Nick and Jorge, is that it is possibly biased to delete some places but not others, and that this implies that 'the wrong gismu is being used'. But the alternative would be a requirement that there be gismu for all possible combinations of sumti with and without other sumti present, to make it possible to form whatever place structure you want to express. This is going too far the opposite end of the scale from JCB, who has ad hoc place structures for compounds that bear no resemblence to their components at times, since he is using malrarna (usually malglico) metaphors to express his lujvo. In designing Lojban, I have made a strong case that lujvo be fairly literal, and that you shouldn't willy-nilly introduce places that are not related to any of the lujvo-components. Even there, however, >I< would want to occasionally accept unrelated places provided that there is a meaningful 'term-deletion' from a specific longer-lujvo taking place to make the resulting lujvo shorter. But the more (literal-lujvo)ists want totally predictable place structures and an absence of the possible natlang bias anything else might permit, or even encourage. I think such predictability would suffocate the langauge though. I want to be able to make a short word that reflects a reasonably-simple and frequently-expressed thought/concept/relationship. This means I want in lujvo MAKING to be able to ignore the analysis that Nick wants, and make the lujvo I want to, on an ad hoc basis. The only analysis I feel I need to make is a) remember if there is another concept that I know that already uses that lujvo, but perhaps with a different conceptual intent, and b) try to imagine from the source tanru for the lujvo being made, whether that tanru might suggest some other, incompatible, concept THAT WILL LIKELY SEE USAGE. These two analyses are basically looking backwards, and looking forwards, with regard to usage of the lujvo in question. We are trying to be considerate of other speakers of the language who might use the word differently than we are wanting to right now. But the essential point is to get my idea across NOW, and too many extraneous places, and/or too many extraneous terms makes it more difficult for such spontaneous usage of the langauge to take place. Yes, your remembrance of what has come before will be incomplete and/or inaccurate, and likely biased by your language background. Similarly, your extrapolation forward will be at least potentially biased. But only a totally algorithmic language will eliminate such biases completely, and we already have ruled that out as a plausible goal. Lojban is NOT algorithmic, nor even close, in how large numbers of its features will work in actual usage. I don't even favor trying to make the language algorithmic, which is what I label jimc's effort as being, because it gives the language an unntural image and 'feel'. And that is already a problem for Lojban as a 'logical language' in the set of 'planned languages' each of which terms implies some degree of unnatural regularity that turns off some people who might really be interested if they weren't limited by the image. On the other hand, if we have taught good lujvo-making HABITS, then a lujvo will be quickly made, which will be close enough to algorithmic that a listener should be able to analyze the lujvo using algorithmic techniques, apply some common sense, and confirm what context says about the place structure. Such analysis might then suggest a better word for the concept, as often happens when people post text here on Lojban List. What little skill I have manged to acquire with Lojban, comes from the fact that I CAN and HAVE made up lujvo on the fly when I speak and write, without recourse to algorithms, and I do so at a speed that makes much of my expression have some aura of spontaneity, though even I cannot devise tanru and turn them into lujvo at fluent speeds. I am out of practice now, especially not having studied rafsi since the remaking, but I did do this at close to acceptable speeds for conversation. Acceptable in this context seems like it should be comparable to the time a natlang speaker spends groping for a word for a concept, discovering that he can't think of one, and then using whatever acceptable rules he knows like Latinate prefixation and verbing nouns (each of which includes a self-defining-by-example-coinage). I think around 10 seconds is a plausible limit, and the speaker must be without recourse to dictionaries and without requiring complete memorization of place structures should deal with most such cases. If Lojban is ever to become a real spoken language, people will have to be able to coin lujvo this quickly, not have to memorize place structures systematically, and be able to learn the skill much more easily than the thousands of words and place structures he needs to have that 50-100K words often said characterize a typical educated speaker. I think people are forgetting this VITAL goal when they argue for fat lujvo, thoroughly analytical place structures, etc. lojbab lojbab