From @uga.cc.uga.edu:lojban@cuvmb.bitnet Wed Jun 07 00:36:28 1995 Received: from punt2.demon.co.uk by stryx.demon.co.uk with SMTP id AA3276 ; Wed, 07 Jun 95 00:36:25 BST Received: from punt2.demon.co.uk via puntmail for ia@stryx.demon.co.uk; Mon, 05 Jun 95 23:31:07 GMT Received: from uga.cc.uga.edu by punt2.demon.co.uk id aa29342; 6 Jun 95 0:30 +0100 Received: from UGA.CC.UGA.EDU by uga.cc.uga.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 1087; Mon, 05 Jun 95 19:29:02 EDT Received: from UGA.CC.UGA.EDU (NJE origin LISTSERV@UGA) by UGA.CC.UGA.EDU (LMail V1.2a/1.8a) with BSMTP id 3586; Mon, 5 Jun 1995 19:29:02 -0400 Date: Mon, 5 Jun 1995 17:30:13 -0600 Reply-To: Chris Bogart Sender: Lojban list From: Chris Bogart Subject: Re: concise filling of places X-To: lojban@cuvmb.bitnet To: Iain Alexander Message-ID: <9506060030.aa29342@punt2.demon.co.uk> Status: R >la lojbab. puza cusku di'e >... > > 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 [...] .i la dilyn cusku di'e: >I think I misinterpreted the purpose of the gismu list, then. Is it >supposed to be a guide for how you hope the language will actually be >used? I thought it was the sort of thing that someone will go back in >20 years or so and revise based on what people actually use in >practice; but that's not entirely true if there are places that people >will never bother to fill. But you ought to be able to tell from context what sort of thing the hidden "zo'e" would be. For example suppose twenty years from now we look at the body of Lojban text and discover that the x3 of xamgu can almost universally be filled in by whatever is in the x2 place. For example, according to the gi'uste you can now say: loi stagi cu xamgu le'e verba - vegetables are good for children or loi titla cu xamgu le'e verba - sweets are good to children The first statement's x3 is implicitly filled by "parents" or "dentists" or "nutrition" or something, but probably not "le verba". The second statement's x3 could possibly be filled by "vy.", in the right context. [pe'i the assumption that the unspoken "standard" of the statment is filled by the speakers opinion or socially recognized authority, is malrarna] If it turned out in 2015 that people always used xamgu the second way, we'd know the x3 place had disappeared, sucked into the x2 place. If they used it both ways we'd know it was still there implicitly, even if it wasn't explicitly used much. I suppose another possibility is some religious community could come to have a lot of linguistic influence among Lojbanists, and maybe "xamgu" would come to have moral connotations that were restricted to a very particular x3; i.e. maybe it would become a specialized religious term, like "righteous" or something, and we'd start using "zabna" for the old, broader meaning of "xamgu". Then I think we could conclude that the x3 had disappeared, but rather than merging with x2 it had become "according to the Koran" or whatever, and maybe xamgu should even be reglossed. ____ Chris Bogart \ / ftp://ftp.csn.net/cbogart/html/homepage.html Quetzal Consulting \/ cbogart@quetzal.com