From LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Sat Mar 6 22:45:55 2010 Reply-To: "John E. Clifford" Sender: Lojban list Date: Tue Dec 26 11:33:05 1995 From: "John E. Clifford" Subject: tech:opaque To: lojban list Status: OR X-From-Space-Date: Tue Dec 26 11:33:05 1995 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU Message-ID: & (to pc): Replying to pc: I think here we're really getting to the crux of the debate. I think: The rules of the language are already clear enough to tell us that [on the whole] the only source of opacity is through bridi subordination, even if the community of users [barring Jorge] has not realized this so far. You think: The community of users understand opacity from sources additional to bridi subordination; therefore we need some rules to regulate this understanding and some cmavo to signal it. pc: Pretty close. Actually, I think that virtually all opacity is bridi subordination, but that some cases of subordination are encapsulated in lexical items, so that -- to take an English example which is relatively safe -- "hunt" has in reality the same structure as "intends/desires that ... TAKE ---", where the ... is filled by the subject of "hunt" and the --- by the object, which is thus subordinated in an intentional context. (TAKE is a shorthand for a concept of trophyizing, whether it involve killing or trapping or just seeing or photographing or whatever.) The only case that I am not sure is bridi subordination is artistic representation and there, for the most part, it might be, to the point that I am willing to treat it as such, with _tu'a_ in Lojban, for example. &: (i) Gismu glosses are merely approximate indications of the actual sense of the gismu. There is no guarantee that the gismu means whatever its keyword gloss means. The actual sense of the gismu is partly determined by its place structure, with the rest to be filled out by current and future usage. Thus nothing can reliably be inferred from the keyword "hunt". pc: How often have I said this myself! Ah well! But still, my occasions have, it seems to me, been about minor points, not central issues -- the difference between "hunt" and "search for," for example -- not the difference between an inherently opacizing concept and "something just like it but not opaque," the which there ain't. Now, lojbab said on another thread just recently that none of the gismu are actually defined. I assume that he means that we only have English-based guides to how to use them, not actual specifications of what they mean. My problem is that the guidelines for _kalte_ as & et x present it (claiming that it is what the list actually says) gives me no clue at all about how to use this word. It is not, for example, the word to use at the bottom of the clauses that say the English "hunt," since that is an achievement word, not an activity or process word. Nor can I use it just to describe an activity or process unless I know that the process will be completed or the activity involves a specifiable target, neither of which is generally possible when I want to talk about the at first glance rather similar activity or process which I English as hunting. The current version of _sisku_ is admittedly worse, but is little helped by the semantic guarantee of success. As for how to opacize places which are not so officially -- which, if the &x version is an accurate report of the present situation, seems the best way to save the day (though I dislike it intensely, from my older point of view -- opacity is not a new discovery but just once was assumed to be in order as it was in all the source langauges, not just English) -- the obvious selma'o is LAhE, which contains all those strange descriptors that attach to already over descriptored expressions to convert them into even stranger descriptions (or descriptions of even stranger things): right grammar: attaches to sumti; semantics so obscure as to permit this move to another world without seeming out of place. pc>|83