From sentto-44114-3404-962739158-mark=kli.org@returns.onelist.com Tue Jul 04 19:37:43 2000 Return-Path: Delivered-To: shoulson-kli@meson.org Received: (qmail 11445 invoked from network); 4 Jul 2000 19:37:42 -0000 Received: from zash.lupine.org (205.186.156.18) by pi.meson.org with SMTP; 4 Jul 2000 19:37:42 -0000 Received: (qmail 10993 invoked by uid 40001); 4 Jul 2000 19:32:42 -0000 Delivered-To: kli-mark@kli.org Received: (qmail 10990 invoked from network); 4 Jul 2000 19:32:41 -0000 Received: from ci.egroups.com (207.138.41.176) by zash.lupine.org with SMTP; 4 Jul 2000 19:32:41 -0000 X-eGroups-Return: sentto-44114-3404-962739158-mark=kli.org@returns.onelist.com Received: from [10.1.10.38] by ci.egroups.com with NNFMP; 04 Jul 2000 19:32:39 -0000 Received: (qmail 2604 invoked from network); 4 Jul 2000 19:32:38 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by m4.onelist.org with QMQP; 4 Jul 2000 19:32:38 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO imo-r11.mx.aol.com) (152.163.225.65) by mta1 with SMTP; 4 Jul 2000 19:32:37 -0000 Received: from Pycyn@aol.com by imo-r11.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v27.10.) id a.64.44b70a6 (4235) for ; Tue, 4 Jul 2000 15:32:33 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <64.44b70a6.269395d0@aol.com> To: lojban@egroups.com X-Mailer: AOL 3.0 16-bit for Windows sub 41 From: pycyn@aol.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Mailing-List: list lojban@egroups.com; contact lojban-owner@egroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list lojban@egroups.com Precedence: bulk List-Unsubscribe: Date: Tue, 4 Jul 2000 15:32:32 EDT Subject: [lojban] _Rose_ is a rose is a rose Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The way I heard it comes out to {le nu la Roz. rozgu cu rozgu}, not that makes any more sense. But I am worried about the talk of nouns and verbs (and adjectives and...) in connection with Lojban. There is only one main syntactic class in Lojban and two minor ones. Predicates refer to relations among relata and most relata are identified by their standing in various relations. For some relata there are also cmene, which refer to relata independently of the relations they may enter into (other than that of being called by the cmene). The other minor grammatical category is cmavo, which can be subdivided into many small groups that perform any number of syntactic functions and occasionally even a content one, but do not classify relata further. Now some predicates translate into English naturally as nouns, others as verbs, others as adjectives, and so on. What we learned from the bottle question (better, are learning, since some questions still remain) is that these translations can be misleading, sometimes even in crucial ways. Against that, we are advised to translate against type as a reminder that Lojban words do not have the same presuppositions and implications as their English counterparts. Beyond this warning, the alternate translations are not better than the natural ones, since they too introduce presuppositions and implications that are alien to the Lojban -- and leave out items that are crucial to it. In particular, it does not mean that the Lojban words we thought of as nouns are really verbs, etc. They are all really predicates, none of them are nouns or verbs. Whorf, working on the cusp between classical linguistics (describe by figuring how to say it in Latin) and positivistic descriptive linguistics but sure that the former was wrong, carries over from the former a translinguistic notion of what a verb is (and a noun and a...) and so can say that every word (even names) are verbs in whatever (Nootka?). But, if the claim were true, it would be false since a language with only verbs would have no verbs at all -- since it has not nouns or adjectives or whatever to contrast with them. On his clear days, BL does manage to unpack some of these claims to say that most words refer to processes or eddies of events rather than to objects and their attributes. If that were what "verb" meant -- which it is not, obviously, in any known language -- then some Lojban predicates would be verbs and others (the ones that referred to stable objects) would be nouns, or at least would be more like the one than the other. But in fact it is unclear what kinds of things Lojban predicates refer to: predicates are interchangeable grammatically except for number of places (not taken to be substantially significant), so all refer to enduring things, events, relations, etc., since some clearly do. I don't see anything in Lojban incompatible with the most strict Aristotelian or Platonist or monistic processist (as Whorf often seems to be -- when he is not a nihilistic processist) -- but alos nothing that comples our metaphysics toward any one of these. Even the abstractors that we names as quality or process or ... are not tied -- except in our understanding of them -- to some preset notion of qualities nor processes nor... The experiment with Lojban is, in part to see what does come out of speaking it, not to build into it some notions we already have of what should emerge. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Free, Unlimited Calls Anywhere! Conference in the whole family on the same call. Let the fights begin! Visit Firetalk.com - Click below. http://click.egroups.com/1/5476/4/_/17627/_/962739158/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscribe@onelist.com