Date: Tue, 28 Oct 1997 11:25:48 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710281625.LAA04442@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: bob@rattlesnake.com Sender: Lojban list From: bob@MEGALITH.RATTLESNAKE.COM Subject: Re: Dvorak (& Lojban) X-To: c9709244@alinga.newcastle.edu.au X-cc: lojban@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: (message from HACKER G N on Tue, 28 Oct 1997 12:28:54 +1100 (EST)) X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2389 Lines: 53 Where English is less definitive, Lojbanists say, "English is less definitive!" Where Lojban is less definitive, Lojbanists say, "English overspecifies!" It's all so polemical. You sound like Esperantists. :) I am not saying that. I am saying that Lojban enables me to consider some ideas that I don't readily find in English. > .i lo mi ke xekri bunre mlatu zu'a vu pu'o kalte le cmacu Looking at your above sentence, and before reading your English translation, I would simply have said, "Far to the left of me, a dark brown cat of mine is about to catch the mouse." That's not difficult to say and I could have sworn it conveyed all the *relevant* information. Not difficult to say, but that is not what I understand the Lojban to say, particularly not what I understand it to say before I filled in the context. My understanding of {pu'o} is that * it does not tell how far to the pastward of the event we referring; and * it does not tell when the event is taking place. (Chapter 10.10, _The Complete Lojban Language_) After reading my statement of context it is fair for you to think the time is "now": `I only have one black/brown cat, I am looking out my window on my left into the field'. This context suggests {ca pu'o}; but before I specified such a context, a listener should figure I may be referring to the past, present, or future; and the cat may be a kitten crouching before a ball of yarn. Indeed, one might wonder whether it is a Sapir-Whorfian effect of your English that caused you to presume that {pu'o} implies {ca pu'o}; or is it that regardless of language, we presume a context to be current and local unless told otherwise? (I can imagine strong practical arguments for the latter.) (Incidentally, insufficient specificity is why I left the designatee of {lo} unspecified until I set the context; after setting the context, the universe of discourse contained only one veridical {lo mi ke xekri bunre mlatu}. Needless to say, if by default we presume a context to be current and local, then I could have presumed you knew that our universe of discourse contained only one veridical cat.) -- Robert J. Chassell bob@rattlesnake.com 25 Rattlesnake Mountain Road bob@ai.mit.edu Stockbridge, MA 01262-0693 USA (413) 298-4725