From LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu Tue May 23 00:09:53 1995 Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 01:40:41 GMT From: Iain Alexander Subject: Re: {prenu} vs. {remna} To: Bob LeChevalier Message-ID: In message <9505212057.aa08861@punt2.demon.co.uk> dpt@math.harvard.edu writes: > .i .oicaisa'e .i zo jipfau basti zo tipyfau pe'i zo mocfau zmadu zo jipfau le ka mapti -- Iain Alexander ia@stryx.demon.co.uk I.Alexander@bra0125.wins.icl.co.uk >From LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu Tue May 23 >From lojbab Dylan: >Or take the motion verbs expressing a manner of movement. I count the >following: > >cadzu x1 walks/strides/paces on surface x2 using limbs x3 >bajra x1 runs on surface x2 using limbs x3 with gait x4 >stapa x1 steps/treads on/in surface x2 using limbs x3 >vofli x1 flies [in air/atmosphere] using lifting/propulsion means x2 >cpare x1 climbs/clambers/creeps/crawls on surface x2 in direction x3 using > x4 [limbs/tools] >farlu x1 falls/drops to x2 from x3 in gravity well/frame of reference x4 >sfubu x1 dives/swoops [manner of controlled falling] to x2 from x3 >plipe x1 (agent/object) leaps/jumps/springs/bounds to x2 from x3 reaching > height x4 propelled by x5 > >IMHO, these are similar predicates and should have similar place >structure. But: only some include the medium; {cpare}, uniquely among >all motion verbs, includes a direction; {bajra} but not {cadzu} includes >a gait; and {farlu}, {sfubu}, and {plipe} but not the rest include >source & destination. As a result, it's very difficult to talk about >someone falling down an infinite pit (consider, for instance, Alice >falling down the rabbit-hole in "Alice in Wonderland"[1]). At one point they all (?) were identical to klama in place structure. But the lean gismu people wanted redundancy eliminated. So now you bajra klama or cadzu klama. Indeed, I think there are remnants of the old place structure in some examples in the draft textbook. In other cases, places were added to account for cultural or metaphorical uses of words. You can walk on your hands - so we added thhe specific limbs. The gaits of 4-legged animal motions apply to various degrees of running (you could say that walking is a specific kind of running gait in a 4-legged animal). Direction was added to climb when we expanded it to include clamber and crawl, which tend to be related etymologically in many languages. plipe was always a pain because its English and other language equivalents tend to be used for both jumping/springing up jumping over, and jumping from/to. the specificity of the place structure was the best way we could think of to clarify the core meaning and exclude those things we did not think fit the core concept (or force them to be lujvo). MANY gismu place structure decisions were made ad hoc based on specific pragmatic usage considerations, and NOT on the basis of creating some ideal mapping of concept space. Indeed I think we have explicitly REJECTED the idea that the gismu should be considered anything like an ideal - that our vocabulary should be in some way a philosopher's language combining pure essences to analytically cover all concepts. Many conlangs have tried for the latter, and we didn't want to. >[1] Yes, there is a source and destination, but they're not relevant to >Alice in the middle of the fall; if I recall correctly, she wonders at >one point whether the fall will ever end. That would currently have to >be translated as wondering whether a terbridi has a value (!). clearly la alis. za'o zo'o farlu ma Whether a place is relevant is less important than whether it exists. You could always use lo cimni. The tougher question is xu lo mluni cu farlu ma ma. lojbab >From LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu Tue May 23 >From lojbab > > One just has to be wary NOT to use a brivla > > metaphorically unless you can metaphorize all of the places of the place > > structure. > >Yes, good advice; PROVIDED the gismu doesn't have extraneous places. > >A good (very long-term) project would be to give examples for the gismu >list, covering both allowed and disallowed usages. In particular, this >would guarantee that all the places can be filled reasonably concisely, >something I sometimes get suspicious about. I would never promise that all gismu places could be filled concisely. Some are present merely to remind us that their existence should be noted in determining whether a statement is true or not. Thus you should not claim that "ko'a mluni le toknu" unless you are indeed asserting that there exist relevant orbital parameters. It isn't necessary to state them concisely, but it is necessary that there be some value that could be filled in if someone really cared. lojbab >From LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu Tue May 23 >From lojbab Dylan: >Is there some other gismu for "Ego" or a lujvo that could be formed? I'm sure some creative soul could come up with one, if we could agree on what it meant. >> I might be inclined to just give "ri" a rafsi - "riz" is the only relevant >> one available though. And the rafsi assignments for sevzi assumed the usage >> frequency implicit in its being the reflexive. > >Hmm. There are problems with {ri}--it wouldn't always be applicable, >e.g., if the places weren't adjacent. True, but you can use conversion to make them adjacent. But I agree - sevzi was designed and hhas been traditionally used for the purpose of reflexive tanru/ lujvo-making, and that should determine the definition - or at least the definaition should encompass that concept as a minimum. >And, of course, whatever is used, the meaning will be ambiguous. I'm >inclined to support Jorge and just recommend sticking in {ri} and not >forming lujvo at all. The English prefix "self-" and the Russian reflexive suffix "cya" are equally ambiguous. But the fact that languages tend to make reflexive lujvo implies that it would be could that Lojban have a way of optionally doing so. You can use "ri" or whatever if you want - indeed you can avoid using any lujvo at all - most Lojban spoken conversation not including Nick Nicholas (%^) uses almost no lujvo of any type, or at most uses ad hoc ones that we devise on the fly. lojbab >From LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu Tue May 23 >From lojbab >If {le da sevzi} is the same as {da}, then {da sevzi da} is always >true--just like {du} (though {sevzi} may be true in more cases). That >is, {sevzi} includes identity, {dunli fi zi'o}. > >Now, maybe we do want something that says "x and y are the identical >object" that isn't the mathematical equality. mintu sevzi was included in the language for use in tanru and lujvo. The meaning of the standalone gismu is to some extent secondary. My understanding/concept of reflexives as actually used in language is that the reflex is not necessarily an identity with the original, but an image of the original. Thus you can gaze upon oneself in a mirror (sevzi catlu) >But then it shouldn't include "ego" in its definition. Not being a German philosopher or psychologist, I have no problem calling ego and id part of my self-image. And in usage, one can examine ones own ego metaphorically like one examines ones physical image in a mirror. This may be a weak definition of either "ego" or "self-image" - but as I said - I ain't a philospher - more an observer of actual language use. lojbab >From LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu Tue May 23 >From lojbab Dylan wrote: >Well, I'd like to take it seriously. Consider the following gismu: > >mluni [lun] >x1 is a satellite/moon orbiting x2 with characteristics x3, orbital >parameters x4 > >lunra [lur] >x1 is Earth's moon (default); x1 is a major natural satellite/moon of >planet x2 > >plini [ ] >x1 is a planet revolving around x2 with planetary characteristics x3, >orbital parameters x4 > >First of all, the place structures are inconsistent, so something should >definitely be changed. Only inconsistent if they are all supposed to match. lunra does not fit in with the other two, and hence should not be compared as to place structure. Instead, compare it to "terdi": The difference between a {mluni} and a {lunra}, as strictly interpreted, >seems to be that a {mluni} could include an artificial sattelite; and >the difference between {lunra} and {plini} is primarily one of size: a >{lunra} is a {cmaplini} (modulo place structure). On the contrary, solri, terdi, and lunra have definitions extended from the specific referents "Sun", "Earth", and "Moon" to allow for those concepts to apply to science fiction or alien cultural concepts that correspond. All 3 are defined with reference to a "home planet", though lunra does not explicitly use the word "home" because in science fictional contexts, moons of other planets in the home solar system are often used as colonial bases. There is a large contingent of SF fans in the Lojban community, and the definitions were worded this way a long time ago in response to "how to say it" questions of a science fictional nature. >I think I see why {plini} has a place for "planetary characteristics"; so >you could say, e.g., {le fi le xunre ku plini} to mean Mars. But again, >this could be done with a relative clause, {le plini poi xunre}, or a >tanru, {le xunre plini}, or a lujvo, {le xunplini}. I'd nominate that >that place be removed. You can do a lot of things with a relative clause. The point is to include any parameters (le ka properties) that justify defining x1 as a "planet". If you want to call a comet a plini, or an asteroid, or the earth's moon, you are constraining the definition of plini from the traditional cultural one for a planet, and the value for x3 should contain that information that makes the claim of planethood true. "Parameters" is thus a somewhat more flexible way to say "standard", because I don't think that a specific standard as opposed to a set of properties will be the most frequent value (should anyone ever decide to specify the value %^). >I'd also nominate that {mluni} not be restricted to astronomical >bodies--that seems like an artificial restriction that's not necessary. There is no such restriction in the definition. I gave an example in another post of how mluni might apply to specific orbiting of a stove. >And I'd also nominate that "orbital characteristics" be changed to >"route" to confuse people less. Even for astronomical use, I think >that's fine. (Though it might make saying something like >"geosynchronous sattelite" somewhat more difficult.) Exactly. So use a route if that is more convenient, or a property abstract "le ka stodi sraji galtu lo pa stizu" if that is a better style of specifying the satellite's motion. >The restriction to ballistic flight is an interesting idea--then one >could say {le bolci le stedu cu mluni}, but not {le lorxu cu mluni le >toknu}. I don't know where I stand on that. We have words for ballistic trajectory objects - danti and farlu. lojbab >From LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu Tue May 23 >From lojbab Dylan: >Actually, I'd recommend changing the behaviour of {ri}. From the >history I know, it seems like the current behaviour was necessary when >it was the only form of pronoun; but now {ko'a}, {ra}, etc. (not to >mention lerfu) cover pronouns quite sufficiently. Specifically, the >antecedent of {ri} should be the sumti whose termination is closest on >the left. That is close to the default behavior. However you skip most monosyllable members of KOhA as being unnecessary to ri-ify. But wait - what means termination closest? Do you count elided terminators or not? If you think of a main complex sumti with relative clauses and specified description sumti, "last terminated" might mean the whole sumti takes precedence over the pieces. This might be desireable, but if you want one of those pieces it will be hard to get to them in-mind. On the other hand, such main sumti can usually be accessed with vo'a-series, if complex enough, assigned a ko'a with little increase in confusion since it already is complex, or most clearly replaced by a BY or "le sumti" style anaphora. Those tend to be most clear when working at the gross levels of the sentence. ri and ra are meant to work like popping a stack, and the last-terminated is often not the obvious thing to pop up on the mental stack. lojbab >From LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu Tue May 23 >From lojbab I'm still behind on this thread, but notice that Jorge wasn't dealing with all Dylan's questions exactly as I would have. So here is my take so-far (I'm still back on last Wednesday's traffic, so pardon me if some of theis has been rendered moot.) Dylan: >[1] Which leads me to ask: how would I say: "two of the man, the woman >and the child" (as a sumti)? "The man, the woman, and the child" is > > le nanmu joi le ninmu joi le verba > >How do I select two of them? Ah. The old "coffee, tea, milk, or water" problem! Where logical connectives break down, and non-logical ones don't have appropriate grammar to meet the specific need. So we invented a specific solution: lu'i ... lu'u which has now been expanded into 3 choices lu'a|lu'i|lu'o ... lu'u, of which you want to use lu'a for the purpose you have in mind. You also probably want "ce" rather than "joi" for the non-logical link - joi creates an indivisible mass with components and not members. re lu'a le nanmu ku ce le ninmu ku ce le verba >> That's a sumti, it's an extension of the above: "one of the two of the >> three women". Of the three women you have in mind, you are selecting >> two, and then saying something about one of them. But notice that >> the last selection is not the same as the others, you are claiming >> something about one of the two, but not selecting which one. >> {le pa le re le ci ninmu} on the other hand, does select which one. >> Of course, all this nesting of selections would be quite confusing in >> actual use, so it probably won't be very common. > ^^^^^^^^ > >{pi'e} This is the only good news in this letter: I take it that this >form has not been used much? Good, let's ditch it. Alas, it is useful (maybe necessary) for some albeit rare circumstances, and in any case is a logical consequence of the grammar, which permits many constructs that mighht not be necessary - but since the grammar generates them, we tend to try to find use for them (often by serendipity finding them to be useful indeed - the lu'i ... lu'u grammar, for example has proven much more logically useful than its original intent because it is now used to convert sumti types among the three: masses, sets, and individuals - very important for logical precision regarding anaphora. >To me, {pa le re le ci ninmu} looks like a total bastard. If {re le ci >ninmu} is a sumti, what are you doing putting {le} in front of it? I >thought {le} was the form for converting a selbri to a sumti--what's it >doing twice here? Because many elements of the grammar have multiple - generally parallel uses. Yes, "le" converts a selbri into an intensional (i.e. non-veridical) sumti. Grammatically it turns out that the result - an intensional sumti with certain default quantifiers, is the more important property than the fact that in the simplest case one starts with a bare selbri and pulls out the x1 of that selbri as a description. The relevant grammar portion is thus: