From LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU Fri Jan 5 18:16:44 1996 Received: from wnt.dc.lsoft.com (wnt.dc.lsoft.com [205.186.43.7]) by locke.ccil.org (8.6.9/8.6.10) with ESMTP id SAA27311 for ; Fri, 5 Jan 1996 18:16:24 -0500 Message-Id: <199601052316.SAA27311@locke.ccil.org> Received: from PEACH.EASE.LSOFT.COM (205.186.43.4) by wnt.dc.lsoft.com (LSMTP for Windows NT v1.0a) with SMTP id 2DAF23E0 ; Fri, 5 Jan 1996 17:49:36 -0500 Date: Fri, 5 Jan 1996 14:36:17 -0800 Reply-To: "John E. Clifford" Sender: Lojban list From: "John E. Clifford" Subject: tech:opaque To: lojban list Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 6373 & > NAhE is useful for shifting the whole bridi into Nephalococcygia - Nephelococcygia pc I meant the land of the sober cuckoos. Sure! & should we propose that to CAhE we add two cmavo for "true of the real world" and "true not necessarily of the real world", with the former being the default? pc In fact, we have those already, _ca'a_ and _ka'e_. Maybe we need something explicitly about stories (my list still has _ci'a_ free, but is badly out of date, I suspect) & {xee} meant "any old broda whatsoever", which I think amounts, in effect, to the same thing as "the quantification on this sumti does not belong in the bridi the default rules would locate it in". I vaguely remember {xee} being in LE or PA, but LAhE is a better selmao for it. pc: I don't see that reading: "any old broda whatever" just draws from whatever the established interpretation of _broda_ is, it says nothing about how that is established and does not obviously change that establishment. I think x wanted to have a leaper, that would guarantee that the _broda_ down in a _nu_ clause was drawn from the external assignment. So, the goal is right (though more directed) but the reading is questionable. &: > We need (in the current depressing state of the language) why depressing? pc: Because it is getting further and further from a natural language commonality (if not universal) and so harder and harder to say normal things. And all for no visible purpose, either practical or theoretical. & You're probably right, but we ought to agree on what this new LAhE would mean. We already agree that this new LAhE is not needed to make the hitherto unsayable sayable [unlike the new CAhA, which would make the unsayable sayable]; so by normal standards, the new LAhE shouldn't be adopted, but your advocacy is given privileged attention. pc: I am not clear what the new CAhA says that can't be said already (see above, with appropriate added notes, from BAI, I think). As for the LAhE -- which I would advocate, remember, only because the natural solution got lost somewhere between 1988 and now and has apparently become unredeemable at this point (a strong argument for carrying on the kind of conversations we have, that are said to never come to a conclusion -- if we had argued this a few years ago, we would not have ever had the gawdawful change) -- the plea is just that, while we CAN say what we want, to do so involves profoundly complex locutions for saying what we have, at first glance (but not at about third) simple expressions for: real, possibly insuccessful, hunting, for example. And this is not a minor problem, since, if you look at the literature, it turns out that all the logical and semantic vocabulary ("entail," "true," etc.) and most of the metascientific ("cause," "explain," "predict," etc.) are of that intentional/intensional/propositional group that create contexts of the problematic sort. So great slabs of one line of justification for Lojban has just gotten markedly (factor of 2+) more complex. As for my special clout, sure!, again. If I had it, we wouldn't be in this jam in the first place -- or would be out of it by now and into a very different one, the one I thought we were in originally (specifying external referents within opaque contexts), which we can deal with by careful forethought, to be sure. & Are we sure that {da tua de broda} is equivalent to {da zou da broda loi suu de zou de coe}, rather than to {da de zou da broda loi suu de coe}? The definition of {tua} implies this. pc: Implies which (pronoun reference)? I take it that in _tu'a de_ _de_ is evaluated in the possibly remote world of _tu'a de_ not the nearer one of _da broda_. But I am not *sure* that it it is meant to -- any flakey thing seems possible these days. There may be no opaque contexts in Lojban (and consequently almost no way to talk about anything of any interest at all). & I think the x2 of djica should be a bridi (i.e. duu/kuau). It makes as much or as little sense to want an apple as it does to want an event. But events in lojban are something very different from events elsewhere. pc: Since I am not too clear about what your bridi are meant to be, I have no comment on this one. I take it that _djica_ takes the equivalent of a _nu_ clause, whatever you want to call these things. I agree that "event" is not ideal but "state-of-affairs" sounds forced (and misleading, since it might be a process, for example). "Situation" maybe? What *those* -- any of them -- are when we come down to it (intensional objects, functions on worlds or on the contents of worlds, sentences, ... -- the Handbook of Philosophical Logic, a fairly conservative tome, offers, up to where I am now, at least five possibilities -- ...) I have no fixed idea either for Lojban or logic or reality. I am getting clearer about how they work -- at least in logic and English and so, hopefully, in Lojban, though. & > These problems need not arise with the artistic subject opaque > places, "picture of", "book about" and the like, since it is at least > plausible such things are always about events: Madame X standing > by a table, not just Madame X, for example. The plausibility thins > a bit with compositions on abstract subjects, but we can probably > circumvent any problems that arise. If we decide we need to. That seems mad to me, unless by "event" you mean "bridi/duu" (i.e. not about Mme X's standing but about that Mme X stands), in which case I see the appeal of the analysis but nonetheless don't go along with it. I prefer your suggestion of something in CAhA meaning "is in a not-necessarily-real world". pc: Trying to draw distinctions between "that" clauses and closed gerundives in English ("Madame X standing by the table") seems pointless to me both from English and logic, but if you see a difference, then go with the "that" clause, which is what seems to be aimed at here. I don't see how the CAhA is going to fit in here, since it was (I thought) for shifting whole sentences not just sumti, though I guess we could modify the predicates in sumti with it. In that case, I suppose that the special LAhE would not be needed. Except for names, where CAhA would apparently not fit. pc>|83