Re: [lojban-beginners] Does the argument limit lead to half-ass words?

On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 10:48 AM, TR NS <transfire@gmail.com> wrote:

On Saturday, May 16, 2015 at 2:22:37 AM UTC-4, la gleki wrote:

2015-05-16 5:10 GMT+03:00 TR NS <tran...@gmail.com>:
In my recent studies of Lojban (and Loglan) I've started to question the efficacy of the argument system. One the things that struck me was the word for "run".

barja x1 runs on x2 using limbs x3 with gait x4

{bajra} ({lo barja} is a tavern, bar)

Ha! I was wondering why the rafsi was `baj` ;-)

That seems a strange definition. I can't really think of single time I ever needed to express that the running was done with anything other then legs.

I watched many videos on Youtube where people were able to run using their hands. Besides, horses don't necessarily have hands and feet.

Perhaps it would be useful when talking about Oscar Pistorius Olympic races, but that's a rather rare case!

So we'll use all places of this verb very seldom! Not all places are always needed.

When I think of running, it tends to be *to* some place or at least *via* some path. The word "barja" really doesn't seem like the idea of running. It seems more akin to "treading", as in "running on a tread mill", since the definition has no arguments whatsoever for origin or destination.

Yes, indeed. Conciseness of English definitions can sometimes lead to their incorrect interpretations.
Here is one of my examples (not sure where I got it):

xu do su'o roi senva lo ka bajra lo jdika grana lo xance be do — Have you ever dreamt of running on your hands on a narrow rod?

Yea, I am not saying the limbs isn't a valid argument. It is. It's just that it seems a less useful than a "to", "from" or "via".


But I suspect that is not what the definer really had in mind. I think rather, those arguments were left out (as if we could sensibly talk about running without them) because the definition needed to stay under five arguments and the definer already knew that a lujvo could be formed with "klama". And so we find the word "bajykla".

bajykla k1 runs to destination k2 from origin k3 via route k4 using limbs b3 with gait b4

This word strikes me as what running is really all about. But notice we lost the surface (x2) argument. Moreover, I could easily imagine an additional speed argument.

That lead me to wonder if the ordinal argument system is really sufficient. "Running" is a concept and everything that can be reasonably associated with the concept should be accounted for in the possible arguments.

I'm sure, you are not going to add places for what was the weather while the person was running or what was the political situation in Berguland at that time. All of those factors could make running somewhat different and result in different results (the weather could change the route etc.)

Right. The weather isn't integral to the idea of running. That's really what I am getting at. It seems like the idea of running has been broken up too much so that integral aspects of the concept have been divided across two words, not because they make sense in themselves, but just to fit a grammar limitation.

Let me give an example in the opposite direction to clarify what I mean. Why is "klama" defined as:

  x1 comes/goes to destination x2 from origin x3 via route x4 using means/vehicle x5.

Why not instead have four simpler words for:

  x1 goes to destination x2

x1 comes from origin x2

x1 traverses route x2

x1 uses/employs x2 for purpose x3

Then combine these to make a lujvo equivalent to "klama". (Note the last already exists as `pilno`.) Clearly this is just as doable as `bajykla`. And to our advantage we have words we can use without extraneous arguments -- as you said, "Not all places are always needed."

While it's kind of neat how "bajykla" can be composed form "barja" and "klama", being *neat* isn't high in my list of criteria for being well defined.

On top of this, reading about Modal Tags, that really hammered home to me that the argument system has some holes. I don't see how a well defined predicate could ever make sense with dynamically added arguments. If they made sense they should already be part of the predicate's definition. (Of course, some modals are basically short-cuts for making relative clauses and not so much case tags at all. These stand out b/c they are universally applicable to just about any predicate.)

In short, it seems like the limitation of keeping the number of arguments within a small range (generally five) is an arbitrary provision that causes some concepts to be chopped-up into equally arbitrary partial concepts. Of course, the converse issue would be how to handle predicates with potentially a dozen arguments when it is already difficult enough to recall the fourth or fifth?

Just use several verbs. You can easily say {mi bajra lo jdika grana lo xance gi'e klama do ...}

Sure. But I am not asking about the technical how to deal with it in the current structure of the language. Rather, I am wondering about a more philosophical question. i.e. Is "bajra" a real concept? Or is it merely a "partial-concept" that exists only because of limitations of the grammar? And if we were to make it complete, something more like `bajykla`, but with even a few more arguments, e.g.

x1 runs to destination x2 from origin x3 via route x4 at speed x5 on surface x6 using limbs x7 with gait x8

How could such long predicates be manageable?

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