Message-Id: <199407072041.AA11675@nfs1.digex.net> Reply-To: jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU Date: Thu Jul 7 16:41:22 1994 Sender: Lojban list From: Jorge Llambias Subject: Re: sumti categories X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Bob LeChevalier Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Thu Jul 7 16:41:22 1994 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU la kolin spuda tu'a mi di'e > > In general, the > > more terbri there are with the feature unspecified, the less useful the > > feature. > > Yes, provided you realise that this is not strictly limited to terbri. I > have indicated that gadri, sumtcita and other cmavo may have these features > as well. Yes, I agree, but terbri are the bulk of it. > One could imagine for example a classification whereby only certain terbri > could match a particular BAI - not that I think there really are any such > examples. I'm not sure I understand you. BAI normally modify (or complement) a whole bridi (or the selbri, depending how you look at it), not the terbri. > > Another very useful feature would be 'number'. For instance namcu, > > se mitre, se cacra, etc, are all +number. Most terbri are -number. > > I can't think of any that would be %number, in which case this > > has usefulness = 1. (Maybe those unspecified for set are also > > unspecified for number, though.) > > I think you're right. > na'ipei mi casnu li re > "? We discuss the number two" Ok, I guess it is unspecified, since it would make some sense to say le tanxe cu mitre le se casnu The box has the discussed length. > (What about na'ipei for the linguist's "?" (doubtful grammaticality)? > I'm not happy about it - I suspect we need a question word on the > jo'a/na'i dimension) How about {na'icu'i}? (Or {jo'acu'i}, depending which side you favour.) > > Properties like 'mass' or 'plant' have very low usefulness (in my > > scale) and so in my opinion it is not so interesting to know the > > value of these features for every terbri, which will be mostly > > unspecified anyway. > > > I agree with you about 'plant' - but I suspect that such categories will > be useful for machine checking and parsing - but not about Mass. I > believe that mass/set/individual is one of the fundamental grammatical > distinctions of Lojban, and is important even if it is comparatively > rarely specified for a terbri. I don't deny that it's an important semantic distinction, but in my opinion it doesn't play much of a role in compatibility criteria, because usually the mass and the individual share most properties and can function in the same places. > I also want to make explicit a point that I think has been implicit in > my postings on this subject: I believe that specifying the categories of > terbri (specifically of tergi'u) makes their meanings clearer, and will > also show us where there is vagueness. I agree fully. This is exactly why I think it's important to specify the categories when they can be specified. > In particular, it will help us to see where a meaning has been generalised > by simply relaxing the specification of a feature, or where the gismu > now applies to two different kind of sumti, but with a slightly different > meaning. Exactly. It is not necessarily bad that a selbri has a slightly different meaning when filled by different categories of sumti, but it's better if we know that we're doing it. > For example, I am quite unsure as to the features of 'banxa'. Consider the > feature +/- concrete. I would be inclined to say -concrete, since it's the institution, not the building, that has the banking functions x3. > A third possibility is that it is unspecified for 'concrete' - I am not sure > what this would mean, but I guess that for some terbri this can be useful. Maybe. This depends a lot on which categories one considers, and for some categories it is difficult to tell whether we are dealing with possibility 3 or possibility 4. > The fourth possibility, which I would regard as very unfortunate, is that > it may mean both of the above - in other words, unspecified for the > feature, but with a different meaning in the two senses. I bet this is what will happen if the definition is not made clear. Jorge