Date: Fri, 12 Dec 1997 13:31:01 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199712121831.NAA11798@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: And Rosta Sender: Lojban list From: And Rosta Organization: University of Central Lancashire Subject: Re: la'e X-To: LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 5726 X-From-Space-Date: Fri Dec 12 13:31:04 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Lojbab: > >> Even if you disagree with that, I don't see what we gain by restricting > >> {la'e lu ... li'u} to those meanings that arise from the _inherent_ > >> properties of uttering the text, rather than to those meanings that > >> arise from any given uttering of the text. > > > >First off, that would require {lu..li`u} to be a text-token, which may > >or may not be a good thing. > > Gadfly here, who doesn't know why or why not text-tokenhood is a good or > bad thing. I think it is a bad thing that {lu ... li`u} should be ambiguous between the type/token reading. Since the token reading can be got be {lo lu .. li`u}, I think plain {lu .. li`u} should have the type reading only. > >But my main objection is that the "inherent meaning" is determinate and > >the "noninherent meaning" is indeterminate. > > I disagree. The inherent meaning is of course often ambiguous. > > The difference between lu..li'u and lo'u...le'u and zoi .kuot... .kuot. > is merely labelling what kind of stuff is in the quote marks. There may > be no linguistic meaning at all to the latter two quotes, or there may > be a special meaning to certain people under certain circumstances. The inherent meaning is determinate. Some utterables may have no inherent meaning. > What is the "inherent meaning" of "Meow" as spoken by my cat, There is none. > and quoted > in Lojban - totally depndent on context. It's not in the least dependent on context. > This can then lead us to look > at lu ... li'u the same way. What is the inherent meaning of "I love > you"? You need to know the values of the pronouns, which will be > context dependent. The inherent meaning is: X, the speaker of "I love you", loves Y, the address of "I love you" > >> To those worried about the horribly arcane nature of this discussion, > >> we are trying to decide whether {le sedu'u xukau ko'a badri} makes > >> sense, as in {mi cusku le sedu'u xukau ko'a badri}, which to me > >> means "I say whether she is sad". > > > >My position is that I don't see how it makes sense if we simply > >extrapolate from known cases. But that does not rule out declaring > >this a valid usage. > > It makes sense to me. I don't care if it makes sense to you. I only care if it makes sense to you simply by extrapolating from known cases. Of course I don't believe it does make sense to you that way. Rather, you are perhaps relying partly on glico intuitions, and partly on the reasoning "Well - I can't think of anything else it could mean, so it must mean this". > Indeed anything in Lojban makes sense if the > listener can ascribe meaning to it. IMHO, anything in Lojban make > EMINENT sense if the listener can ascribe the meaning that the speaker > INTENDED. You go off and speak your relexified-English version of Lojban. But please let the rest of us get on with using a language with more stringent criteria of what makes sense. > There is no requirement that the semantic analysis of this > construct be consistent with the semantic analysis of that construct. There is no *requirement*, but it nonetheless is the default for every language. > Making sense of course has little to do with goodness of Lojban. I > could but this paragraph in zoi quotes and it would be valid Lojban and > convey the intended meaning, but most would not consider that "good" > Lojban. Given your objectionable definition of making sense, this is true. > If we know what "xukau ko'a badri" means as a Lojban predication, which > we must if we can talk about "ledu'u xukau ko'a badri", We *don't* know what "ledu'u xukau ko'a badri" means unless we know what selbri it is sumti of. I have demonstrated this in earlier postings. > then "le sedu'u xukau ko'a badri" makes sense. It would be better if you proved this by translating it into predicate logic. > Furthermore, since we use (or at least Jorge uses %^) "ledu'u xukau ko'a > badri", and a du'u abstraction is a 2-place predicate, there must by > definition be a "le sedu'u xukau ko'a badri" Again, the only way to prove that your reasoning is not faulty is to show what that meaning is. As it happens, I have already done this, in an earlier message. > >> >> Then we don't have an automatic way of expanding > >> >> {broda le du'u xukau brode}, because it will depend on > >> >> the meaning of {broda}. The expansion for {djuno} is > >> >> different than the one for {kucli}. > >> > > >> >That's right. > >> > >> Not very nice, though. > > > >The price of having the unexpanded forms is that they don't > >all expand in the same way. > > We agree again. It is useful simply that there be a definite > expansion to any given construct. Systematicity to such expansion > is a luxury that would cripple the language as a human language. > Since you are talking in particular about definitions of brivla, it > simply is not practical for any coiner/user of a new brivla to > perform the abstruse analysis you guys want to perform in order to > expand everything to some kind of ideal logical form. I consider > even the Chapter 12 conventions for lujvo-making to be too much > analysis (though I accept its usefulness for dictionary purposes at > least for helping determine the place strctures of brivla where > actual usage does not indicate the users' intent regarding possible > unfilled places). > > But real people are going to coin/borrow brivla like kucli, and > use them in presumably intellectually sloppy ways. Since we are in > the descriptive phase rather than prescriptive phase of the > language, we are constrained to consider these ways valid Lojban if > they are well-formed OK up to here. > and if they communicate successfully. Of course I reject that condition. --And