From - Mon Feb 26 10:38:26 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 WAA25527 for ; Sun, 25 Feb 1996 22:52:00 -0500 Message-Id: <199602260352.WAA25527@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 426D8A48 ; Sun, 25 Feb 1996 22:15:39 -0500 Date: Sun, 25 Feb 1996 17:44:51 +0000 Reply-To: ucleaar Sender: Lojban list From: ucleaar Subject: intemperate response to Lojbab on situation types To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 9233 > >> but it IS possible to look at that point event as having substructure. > >> So nu mi co'a citka could be ANY of the 4 Aristotelian event types. > >It is entirely possible that something can be conceptualized either as a > >point event or as an activity, but equally the same thing can be > >conceptualized as a blob of red cabbage. So I don't dispute what you > >say, but don't find it relevant to the issue of the semantics of ZAhO. > Since the semantics of ZAhO are DEFINED in terms of the Aristotelian > event types, they are quite relevant. What is irrelevant is one's ability to conceptualize X as being of more than one event type. > Implicitly, to use "ca'o" for example means that you are NOT describing > a point event, and tends to imply that you are describing an activity or > a state. za'o and co'u vs. mu'o, referring to implicit differences from > a natural ending point, imply a process, since for all other event types, > the natural ending point is indistinguishable from any other point in the > event. Quite so. > > I can believe {koa mue i koa puu i koa zirpu i koa brifu i koa cecmu i > > mua cui cai} - but so what? > I have no idea what "ko'a mu'e" or "*ko'a pu'u" might mean They are both grammatical (as far as I know), and both have obvious meanings. {koa mue} means "It is a point event abstraction" and {koa puu} means "It is a process abstraction". If you look up NU in you cmavo list you will find these two cmavo. > (nor mu'acu'icai - intensely not-particularly exemplary???). {mua cui} means "omitting examples". According to maoste, at least. So {mua cui cai} = "very much omitting examples". {cui} is not the scale of exemplariness. > >Strictly speaking, it is wrong to say that *predicates* are telic and > >durative, for it is situations that have such properties, not predicates > >(which are logical objects). > OK, be picky. Lojban predicates are textual representations of what we > call relationships, and you seem to be calling situations. You misunderstand. Predicates are logical, not lexical/textual, objects. Whether you define them extensionally or intensionally, they still don't have aktionsart. I call (suo re place) predicates relationships too. > >For some but not all gismu the definition entails that some situation is > >involved and it has certain properties - e.g. {cinba} necessarily > >involves a kiss, and that is clearly not a state. > Why not? Have you no imagination? A bicycle is not a racehorse, however good your imagination and your ability to view it as a racehorse. A kiss is not a state. > I picture statuary of two lovers embracing, and have no problem viewing > their act as lo za'i cinba (the statues are kissing, in addition to them > being la'e a perhaps more transient event of kissing) I realize that you have no problem viewing their act as lo za,i cinba. That is precisely the problem. If {ti za,i} is true than {ti nuncinba} is not (assuming {nuncinba} means "is a kiss"). {ti cinba za,i} or {ti za,i zei cinba} might be fair descriptions. > > I can't retrace > >your reasoning by which you reached the multiply erroneous conclusion > >"all Lojban predicates are telic and durative". Please try again. > All Lojban predicates (or what they represent if you prefer) are BY > DEFINITION optionally seen as having telic and durative properties. Or > in Aristotelian terms, there are no arbitrary reasons why one cannot > view any predicate "situation" as a state, process, activity, or point > event. I don't see predicates as representing anything. No predicate, as far as I can see, has telic or durative properties, let alone by definition. There are indeed no arbitrary reasons why one cannot view any situation as a state, process, activity, or point event. Nor are there non-arbitrary reasons why one cannot view any situation as a state, process, activity, or point event, though there are non-arbitrary reasons why it can be difficult to view some situations as a state, process, activity, or point event. And there most emphatically are non-arbitrary reasons why certain situations are not states, or not processes, or not activities, etc. You seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that situation types are somehow privileged, are somehow different from other objects. They're not. You can view cabbage as gas rather than solid. But cabbage is still solid. You can view laughter as a state. But laughter is still activity. You seem to feel not confused on these matters, yet I can't make head nor tail of what you say. Could you, then, point me to a discussion of these matters, whether it is in the refgrammar or in non-lojban linguistic or logicophilosophical literature? I don't mean that as a test of your correctness, for I cannot myself now think of a text that I could refer you to, in order that you might see things my way. > >Take some particular eddy in the universal flux. Call it Ted. Ted is > >what happens when the 100m sprint final is held at the LA olympics. The > >property of being a race running does not inhere in Ted. It is you who > >categorizes Ted as a race running (& indeed it is you who marks Ted off > >as distinct from the rest of the universe that is not Ted). > >Now, one of the things we know about the class of race runnings is that > >one of its membership requirements is that its members be a process, > This is by definition NOT a membership requirement in most any Lojbanic > class (the x1 of pruce being an obvious exception). Forbidding a definition of any class from including a requirement that members be processes is as stupid as forbidding definitions from including a requirement that members be, say, solid. A race running must be dynamic and inherently bounded. Therefore it is a process. If it is not dynamic and inherently bounded then it's not a race running, and of course it's not a process. > >just as being a dog entails being a mammal. So if you categorize Ted as > >a race running, you are categorizing T as a process. If you categorize > >Ted as, say, a state, then you can't categorize T as a race running; > >rather you have to categorize T as a race-running- oidal-ish-thingy, > >which is a category distinct from but similar to Race Running. > Then in that case, virtually all Lojban predicates are > "-oidal-ish-thingys" and not equivalent to their apparent English > counterparts, because they do NOT inherently restrict to processes or > states in internal structure. I'll set aside the problem of you trying to view predicates as processes, etc. If you mean to say that all categories in Lojban are oidal-ish-thingies then that view is too nonsensical to be correct, and I must conclude that you have misunderstood something. > (But I don't think that English words are so restrictive either - it is > just more unusual in English to look at things in unusual ways of this > sort). I will not debate this, since our object of study is Lojban, not English. > I can choose to talk about "Ted" (in Lojban) and NOT recognize the > evolving nature of Ted, but rather see only the steady-state properties, > and thus think of Ted as a "state". Or I can refer to the repetitive > nature of the substructure of Ted (laps, paces) and think of Ted as an > "activity". Or I can be thinking about how Ted is simply so incidental > to the eternity of the universe, that Ted is a "point event". Yes yes yes yes. All this I have said repeatedly. What you haven't grasped is that when you think of Ted as a state, or as an activity, you are not thinking of Ted as a race running. > But recognizing these different aspects of Ted does not change the fact > that Ted still is the same race-running. Ted is still Ted. That is not at issue. > I could easily analyze Fred, which is "lo nu cinba" as either of the > four types by choosing to recognize different aspects as preeminent. I have yet to encounter a coherent and comprehensible account of what "nu" means, so I can't comment on this. > ("Aspect" does refer etymologically to the way one looks at something so > this seems quite appropriate. telicity and duration are thus aspects of > a Lojbanic "situation" and not normally "properties" of it.) You're right about the meaning of "aspect", which is why when linguists are being careful with their terminology they will generally avoid calling this phenomenon "aspect", using instead terms like "situation type" or "aktionsart". Telicity and durativity falls under the latter rather than under "aspect", since they involve properties of the situation rather than the way one looks at it. "Aspect" would then be reserved for perfective/imperfective contrasts, which have to do with the bit of the situation that is within the field of view. I don't know how to take your statement "telicity and duration are thus aspects of a Lojbanic "situation" and not normally "properties" of it". Either it's straightforwardly incorrect, or a 'lojbanic "situation"' has no connection with situations and has a meaning I can make no sense of at all. Coo. Mie And.