From LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU Wed Jan 31 06:00:49 1996 Received: from VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM (vms.dc.lsoft.com [205.186.43.2]) by locke.ccil.org (8.6.9/8.6.10) with ESMTP id FAA25321 for ; Wed, 31 Jan 1996 05:55:29 -0500 Message-Id: <199601311055.FAA25321@locke.ccil.org> Received: from PEACH.EASE.LSOFT.COM (205.186.43.4) by VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.0a) with SMTP id 7FBF1B59 ; Wed, 31 Jan 1996 5:00:26 -0500 Date: Tue, 30 Jan 1996 21:41:33 -0600 Reply-To: "Steven M. Belknap" Sender: Lojban list From: "Steven M. Belknap" To: John Cowan Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 4157 >John Cowan writes: >>la stivn. cusku di'e >> >>> Actually, this utterance would be impossible for an hypothermic human. >>> Living in the midwest, and attending to the care of street people, I have >>> had several patients with that degree of hypothermia. Physiologically, 5C >>> is a *big* deficit. Enzyme reaction rates are nearly halved. Coma is an >>> invariable consequence. So the of the statement could not be human, >>> because comatose humans do not construct utterances. >> >>I bow to your superior expertise. > >Of course, it could be that is hyperthermic (and possibly comatose), >rather than who is hypothermic (and presumably poikilothermic). It's >a *relative* expression. Interesting semantic and metaphysical point. The possibility Scott suggests is certainly more likely than being an intelligent lizard! The issue of relativity of an expression seems a bit sticky to me. An utterance, whether in lojban or some other language is not fully context independent-it occurs in a metalinguistic context of cultural, physical, and logical precedents. When I hear someone say <.i mi lekmau do lo kelvo be li mu> "I am colder than you by 5 degrees kelvin." there is an *implicit* standard, independent of the semantics of lojban which I apply. I call this implicit standard, the "news-worthy" or "man-bites-dog" standard. Suppose that the government announces that the gross national product rose by 25% in 1995 compared with 1994. The headline in the Chicago Tribune would be something like: "GNP up by 25% in '95" rather than the logically equivalent "GNP 20% less in 94 than in 95" In this case, the arrow of time dictates which is the "standard" Consider the headline: "Eritreans found to be colder than Amazonians" I parse this as follows: For purposes of this comparison Amazonians are normative, the notable fact conveyed is that Eritreans are colder than the proxy normative Amazonians. Weak inference being Eritreans are colder than me. If it was the Eritreans which were the intended proxy normative, then the headline in the Chicago Tribune would be: Amazonians found to be warmer than Eritreans Note that I am not claiming that lojban, english or any other language *requires* speakers/listeners to adopt the "news-worthy" standard. It is just a convention in the metalinguistic environment in which American English exists. Of course, some people might argue that such conventions are a property of english & other natural languages, perhaps differing among natlangs. Perhaps lojban will be free of these conventions/assumptions. This may prove to be the case, but I suspect it is too early to say. It is my opinion that these conventions are not properties of the language per se, and will therefore be applied to lojban. Unless I am completely wrong, in which case someone on the list will kindly point out to me the error of my ways. An opposing point of view might be that English grammer actually includes metarules like my "news-worthy" standard, and that lojban is free of these metarules. Perhaps cultures which include prominent display of pithy headlines have the "news-worthy" metarule in their languages. A related point from AI is that if I say "Bill's foot is in the canoe." I moderately infer that Bill's foot is attached to Bill. This is certainly not logically implicit in the statement. We "know" things about the universe which are essential to discourse, but are independent of grammer. As speakers of lojban with differing native languages may bring to lojban different metarules, the possibility of misunderstanding remains for lojban speakers/listeners, and this misunderstanding (I hypothesize) will not be resolvable by lojban grammer alone. If lojban proves to be good for nothing else, it sure has made me think hard about semantics & meaning. cohomihe la stivn Steven M. Belknap, M.D. Assistant Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Medicine University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria email: sbelknap@uic.edu Voice: 309/671-3403 Fax: 309/671-8413