Message-ID: <20060322214930.89898.qmail@web81303.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 13:49:30 -0800 (PST)
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From: John E Clifford <lojban-out@lojban.org>
Reply-To: clifford-j@sbcglobal.net
Subject: [lojban] Re: semantic primes
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--- Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 3/22/06, John E Clifford
> <clifford-j@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> >   I suppose that,
> > if language never involves its own
> definitions
> > (which is possible but rarely occurs in
> > practice), then the argument doesn't have any
> > force.  But I would think that the ability to
> > define itself is inherent in language and
> thus
> > the argument applies -- even as a practical
> > matter.
> 
> I'm afraid I don't see what the argument is.
> Language works in
> practice, that's clear. Language can be used to
> talk about
> language, you can define one part in terms of
> other parts, that's
> also clear. What is not at all clear is that
> some part of language,
> some concept, has to be taken as primal, this
> is not something
> at all obvious. My impression is that all
> concepts generally play
> off of one another, not that they are all built
> upon some fundamental
> ones.

No one claimed they were built up from others in
any sense but that it is possible to define all
concepts starting from just a few (relatively
speaking).  The alternative is to say that a
language (it would only take one to make the
point) cannot completely define its vocabulary. 
The most one could get would be overlapping
partial definition sets, with the bottom level of
one set being at a higher level in some other(s).
 As a practical matter, given a finite span of
concern, this is sufficient pehaps, if we don't
get caught in a circle.  For a theory, however,
it is a disaster, since it means that a language
can only be completely defined in another
langauage and so on to an infinite regress.  As
usual, it seems best to stop at the first step if
possible.  NSM holds that it is possible for each
language and furthermore that the initial step in
every language is the same (directly
intertranslatable).

> > > What would be the problem with defining
> "bad"
> > > as
> > > "OPPOSITE of GOOD"? Why would you need to
> have
> > > a preffix meaning "opposite"?
> >
> > Oh, it doesn't have to be a prefix, just a
> fixed
> > expression of some sort.
> 
> The definitions I've read for other concepts
> don't look much like
> fixed expressions.

I don't follow this, I think.  Do you mean that
in other languages, the words that correspond to
the  concepts are not fixed expressions?  If you
can make that case for any language you have shot
down the NSM project in its present form, since
that fixed form is a requirement to be a prime. 
If you mean that NSM definition (strictly
"reductive paraphrases") don't seem to be in
fixed form, I'd like to see a case.  The ones I
have seen seem to adhere to the canon (which does
have a bit of wiggle-room for context, but that
is built in).
 
> > And the problem of
> > defining "bad" as the opposite of "good" is
> that
> > this definition does not give an adjective in
> > form; that is, it is not a definition in NSM
> > terms.
> 
> Not all languages have adjectives though, so if
> it's important
> that GOOD and BAD are adjectives, they can't be
> universal primes.

But we are after a definition of "bad" in
English, which does have adjectives.  In another
language we would have another locution for
OPPOSITE OF (or maybe not) and another word for
GOOD and the issue would have to be decided for
that case.  Each language defines its own words,
not that of another language (although
translingual definitions are often very useful
and informative, certainly to speaker of the
other language and sometimes to the natives as well).


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