From pycyn@aol.com Sun Sep 10 13:44:54 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 18936 invoked from network); 10 Sep 2000 20:44:54 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by m1.onelist.org with QMQP; 10 Sep 2000 20:44:54 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO imo-r04.mx.aol.com) (152.163.225.4) by mta3 with SMTP; 10 Sep 2000 20:44:54 -0000 Received: from Pycyn@aol.com by imo-r04.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v28.15.) id a.a7.7382098 (4542) for ; Sun, 10 Sep 2000 16:44:41 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 16:44:40 EDT Subject: RE: why no postings? II To: lojban@egroups.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: AOL 3.0 16-bit for Windows sub 41 From: pycyn@aol.com X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 4284 more not quite records: The search for names of characters produced a long list, with some controversies. the main issues were whether the character should be named per se or whether it was the function that was important. Both views were well represented, but the cross cases -- one form, several function ("-") and one function, several forms (exponentiation) were unresolved. There was some movement in the direction that characters (-{bo}) should be by form and that function strictly belonged in MEX or some metalanguage. But many functions had nowhere to go naturally. The other question was about the scope of {bo}, whether and how it could bind to complex items, as needed for many cases -- both of form and of function. The idea of devising "computer Lojban" (or "Lojban computer") stalled on two issues. 1) What is the grammar of familiar computer words. like "Edit" or "File" or "Select"? Many look like verbs (imperatives, perhaps), some seem clearly nouns, and others intermediate -- gerunds, say. These lead to a variety of suggested forms -- as does the issue of details, is it {sidju} or {se sidju} or {nu sidju} if it is a verb. 2) Ought we to devote time to jargon words at all when so many general purpose words are still lacking (cf. the huistory of TLI word formation). Shouldn't we rather be using fu'ivla (skamr-) to deal with these without eating too deeply into the Zipfy general purpose words space of lujvo? I am inclined to think that the empty-bottle problem is solved in a two-fold way, except that some people dislike each (and a few both) of the solutions. 1) While {ta botpi noda} entails {ta na botpi}, it implicates in a good Gricean way that ta fails to be a botpi ONLY (or, at least primarily -- is supect it lacks a cap, too) in lacking a content. Thus the first gives more information than the latter and so, while the entailment can be reversed, doing so ends up with a very different meaning for the first sentence. 2) The use of {zi'o} allows us to construct the new preidcate {botpi zi'o} that applies to every such that {botpi} applies to and also to those such that {botpi} does not apply precisely because there is no w to form the latter quad. Again, using {ta botpi zi'o} implicates (but does not entail) {ta botpi noda} and {ta na botpi} and stresses that what is missing is just content. I find form 1 more natural, but form 2 safer. In spite of the arguments given, I still am unconvinced that the Lojban date order DDMMYYHHMMSS.X... needs to be changed to the ISO standard. Languages for people often don't fit machines -- else why have programmers? I would like to think (but don't) that all agree that the primary difference between {le} and {lo} (and the other e-o gadri pairs) is +/- specific and that the case where {le} (etc.) are no veridical is a (maybe Gricean) consequence of that difference (if you know WHO they are, what does it matter what they are called?). The same difference presumably carries over to {voi}-{poi}, but might not. If it doesn't, what is the difference in this latter case? {za'o} continues to generate a lot of fun. Does it, when used as a tense, give a reference to the intended goal (natural stopping place) that is overshot, or to the actual stopping place, leaving the place o'ershot implicit? As a sumtitcita is is assumed to take the "natural stopping place" as argument. Then there is all the ingenuity devoted to defining its mirror image, starting too soon or too late, and thus using the implication (if even that) that the cessitive means stopping before the natural stopping place (even when there isn't one). All of this has been profitable in making the situations clearer, but none of it is yet decisive.