Date: Wed, 3 Dec 1997 12:21:35 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199712031721.MAA07111@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: And Rosta Sender: Lojban list From: And Rosta Organization: University of Central Lancashire Subject: Re: GLI Re: What the *%$@ does "nu" mean? X-To: Logical Language Group X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 8186 X-From-Space-Date: Wed Dec 3 12:23:10 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Lojbab: > >Again I think you're responding to the wrong point. While the > >philopsophy of perception is interesting, the relevant point > >remains the distinction between concrete and abstract entities. > >Even if you believe that viska, or zgana, or whatever can have > >an abstract percept sumti, the fact remains that any te sumti > >that must be concrete cannot be a nu, if a nu is an event-type. > > Ah, but Lojban does not prescribe that there is inherently a concrete/ > abstract dichotomy in indivdual te sumti. I may not know what it means > to say "li mu cu djuno" or "le nu klama" cu jubme" But this is "just semantics" > and Lojban for the most part eschews the prescription of semantics > (at least partially because the only way we have to talk about semantics is > in terms of English which has its own semantics assumptions). The fact remains that it IS possible for a selbri to have a sumti that must be concrete or must be abstract, just as it is possible for a selbri to have a sumti that must be male or must be female. This is still straying from the point, which is that a distinction can be made between concrete things, which exist in space-time, and abstract things, which don't, and John has proposed that a nu is an abstract thing, while usage indicates that a nu is a concrete thing. > >> >There was a long thread on this a month or two ago, which I did > >> >not participate in. > >> > >> And which like all the rest petered out after much volume with no > >> resolution and obviously just as much confusion among at least as > >> many people as when we started. > > > >I'm not sure that anyone except you remains confused. > > I'm not sure that more than half a dozen people even read the posts, as > indeed I think is usually the case in these hypertechnical discussions. I don't see that that matters. Those who care participate, if they can. Those who don't care, don't. > >The debate was resolved. It became clear that ni and jei have > >contradictory definitions. Chris is probably right that we must > >conclude that ni and jei are homonymous. > > I do not see how this can be even plausible, since ni is open-ended and > jei is close-ended. Ni is homonymous. Jei is homonymous. What do you find implausible about this. Homonyms are words with the same form and different meaning, or, alternatively, are word-forms corresponding to more than one meaning. > >> Yet I have yet to see a Lojban statement using jei that I did not > >> understand. > > > >I don't see what understandability has got to do with it. > > Since Lojban semantics is largely undefined, understandability is everything. The refgrammar is pretty clear on the meanings of jei. Not so clear on ni. > >For simple mastery of the language, Jorge is certainly the > >authority of authorities. > > I contend (and suspect that Jorge would agree) that Nick remains supreme > due to relative fluency. Given open-ended amounts of time, I think there are > several people including myself who are as competent as Jorge. But most of the > rest of us don't have that time. I suspect that for you, "mastery" means remembering the glosses on the gismu list and remembering the phrase-structure grammar fairly intimately, and perhaps being able to compose grammatical sentences at speed. But for that, "mastery" is a misnomer. I was taking it to imply broad knowledge and understanding of the language. In my experience of Lojbanists - this list, plus a very pleasant and entertaining few days in the company of Nick - Nick has the greatest "facility" ("mastery" in the sense I attribute to you), while Jorge has the greatest mastery in the more appropriate sense of the word. No amount of modest disclaimers from Jorge will dissuade me from this opinion. > >Anyway, there are certain established but possibly unwritten > >conventions, such as the absence of homonymy in Lojban. > > I am unsure by this wehether you mean polysemy of an individual word > or two words sharing a single meaning. Either. Noone has ever been able to satisfactorily draw a distinction between them. > If you mean an absence of polysemy, then I would say that there is no such > principle regaridng the structure words of Lojban (as opposed to content > words), and indeed we have several cmavo which are explicitly polysemous > if analogical in some way in various grammatical contexts. "nai" being > one of the most obvious. > > I think that we have tried to MINIMIZE polysemy except where it is implicitly > marked by differences in grammar. But I don't think we have enough of a > theory of Lojban semantics to eliminate polysemy, if indeed it is even possible > in human language. I bet there's a widespread presumption that polysemy (or homonymy between words in same selma`o) is not allowed. > >We have set no policy on what the riole of myself and > >> anyone else who serves as an LLG editor of Lojban text will have as a > >> prescriptive force (i.e. what kinds of errors we can/will reject) but I hope > >> my role will be no greater than any other person who copuld speak the langua > >> as well as me. > > > >How do you judge how well someone can speak L? > > I would be hard pressed to come up with a short answer to that especially since > I have not done much LOjban judging myself in recent months. > > I suspect that it has to do with how often they make 1) overt errors of > grammar or word choice (including mastery of the gismu list) - and especially > the basics since I don't expec that anyone has a parser built into their > brain yet for complex grammar 2) successfully communicate with other > Lojban speakers who can comment intelligently on what they have read/heard > without a lot of negotiation in either Lojban or English 3) successfully > understand and still manage to detect and correct errors of others. As I thought. > >> I am perhaps a little harsher towards Ashley because, whereas you have > >> written texts in the language and more or less successfully communicated in > >> the language, you have some credibility as a Lojban speaker. > > > >You repeatedly apply this criterion. It seems to be little more > >than some kind of initiation rite; a sign of insiderhood. > > yes it is. Until you use the language, you have nothing at stake > and little reason to empathize with those others who have used and > are using the language. We know that those who have used tha > language or who have attempted to learn the language in the past > have a different mindset towards the language itself, and towards > the possibility of change in the language, and towards authority > over the language than do those who have not yet made some overt > commitment. This is true. But you make this the case by definition, by excluding those who have not learnt sufficient Lojban and have not spent sufficient time using it. > I think this similarly reflects the attitudes of native > speakers of human languages to "reform efforts" as well as the > resistance of Esperantists to those who would change THAT language. Sort of. > >The quality of my writing about Lojban has not been improved by my > >writing in Lojban, and the sensible things Ashley has been saying > >are not any the less sensible for his not having posted > >texts in Lojban. > > I disagree with reagrd to your Lojban postings, but quality > presumably is subkjective. The types of "errors" that get > discussed in these messages I consider to be quite incidental to > quality of Lojban usage among the present set of speakers. When > we have a few hundred speakers who have used the language and who > established the types of things discussed in these polemics > through extensive usage sahred by all of them, then a user who > fails to follow one of them THEN becomes in some way marked as a > less skilled Lojbanist. Right now, Lojban skill is marked by what > you achieve in communicating in the language and not by the rules > that you fail to follow (though of course failure to follow some > portion of the rules renders you unintelligible). This is your definition of Lojban skill and quality of usage. There are others, at least if not more Lojbanic. More tomorrow. --And