Date: Thu, 16 Feb 1995 22:23:52 +0000
From: ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
Subject: Re: replies re. ka & mamta be ma
In-reply-to: (Your message of Wed, 15 Feb 95 22:12:42 EST.)
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To: Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Reply-to: ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
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Jorge:
> > What I would claim is that if 2 lgs can express the same idea,
> > but 1 lg takes 1 word to do so & the other takes 10000 words, then
> > the pragmatic difference between the two expressions is so great that
> > they don't feel like the same idea: one feels simple & the other
> > complicated.
> That's why I think {kau} is important. The reformulation using
> 10000 words just doesn't feel like the same idea.
 
For most Q-kau, avoiding it costs an extra 4 words.
Furthermore, while I said that for a language used by me to
be to my taste it ought to fit my world view, noone has ever
asserted that this should be required of Lojban. In fact
to do so would violate its cultural neutrality.
 
I'd go along with Q-kau because it avoids the forethought
required of explicit prenexes. But not for any other reason.
 
> If all you want is a language adequate for express everything, then aaaa
> will do. (That's the name of the language). It has a minimal grammar, and
> its vocabulary can grow as much as necessary to meet the needs of the
> speaker.
> Obviously you are imposing other conditions, and I think they must be
> related to "practical" and "convenient", and I may agree with most of
> them but I think they are absolutely subjective. I still don't see any
> objective criterion that says that something is basic and something else
> is an add-on.
 
The requirements that the lg must reflect cognition, and must have certain
properties shared by natural lgs, like being finite in size when taken
synchronically aren't absolutely subjective. They're objective. The
problem is merely that given our present state of knowledge it can't
be ascertained whether or to what extent a lg reflects cognition.
 
We probably started this discussion with a false dichotomy (due to me),
that the two factors relevant to lg design are ease of use and simplicity
of grammar. With the benefit of hindsight, I'll change the aim of the
thought-experiment: the lg need make no concessions to ease of use.
But sundry other constraints, already discussed, remain.
 
To the miniscule extent that any of this discussion is relevant to
Lojban, my point is that ease-of-use & flexibility justifications
for some grammatical device should be distinguished from other
justifications.
 
> > > Do you consider {ko'a zmadu ko'e} and {ko'e mleca ko'a}
 truth-conditionally
> > > equivalent?
> > In principle, they could be. In practice, it depends on exactly what
> > {zmadu} and {mleca} end up meaning when the lg gets known properly.
> > > Do you allow semantics to determine truth-conditionality?
> > I'm not sure I understand. I'd have thought it is precisely
> > semantics, & only semantics, that determines truth-conditionality.
> Not always. {mi e do klama} is truth-conditionally equivalent to
> {mi klama ije do klama}, but this is independent of the semantics.
> They are sintactically truth-conditionally equivalent.
 
We must understand different things by "syntax" and "semantics".
The semanticosyntactic rules that derive duhu from seduhu yield the
same duhu for the two sentences you cite. To see if the two
seduhu are t.c. equivalent we examine the duhu derived from them.
If you examine the duhu, the matter is semantic. If you examine
the seduhu the matter is syntactic. This is semantic.
 
> I too was talking about a more general "same meaning", but I don't
> see how you can make an assertion about "truth-conditionality" in
> the mleca/zmadu case, since as you say, their meaning is determined
> pragmatically.
 
I don't say their meaning is determined pragmatically. Part of their
meaning is determined by the grammar. It just happens that
the grammar of Lojban in my head is so sketchy that I was unable to
answer your question.
 
> In the same sense, how can you say that the logical
> expansion of {kau} is really truth-conditionally equivalent to kau?
> Shouldn't we wait and see what it ends up meaning in practice?
 
Some bits of Lojban semantics we do have a clear idea about.
These bits are the ones that correspond to formal logic, predicate
calc, etc. The bits that are vague are principally gismu definitions.
{kau} is of the already-knowable type, while {zmadu/mleca} are of
the not-yet-knowable type.
 
> > > > Dismissing {kau} affects the grammar because [...]
> > > > (b) the lexeme-specific
> > > > and complicated rules for deriving semantic structure from syntactic
> > > > structure containg {kau} could be scrapped.
> > > As for (b), if scrapping the semantico-syntactic rules relevant to {kau}
> > > simplifies the grammar, so would doing the same thing with respect to
 {pa}.
> > There aren't any semantico-syntactic rules specific to {pa}, apart
> > from the one teenyweeny rule that says {pa} means "1".
> Right. Because you've decided that "1" is an indivisible atom of meaning.
> Of course, if that is your assumption, then {pa} can't be dismissed.
 
I assume that Lojban is supposed to translate in pred calc and that that
is one of its guiding ideas. You can translate {pa} simply as "1", while
in contrast, {Q-kau} translates in a much more complex way.
 
---
And