Re: [lojban-beginners] Who created the universe? no da, zi'o, etc.

[Michael Turniansky <mturniansky@gmail.com>]

On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 12:46 PM, paul_faehrbrorn <pa.fae@gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi everybody,
>
> I have been reading about Lojban for quite while now, more or less
> read through the CLL, and started playing around with the language.
> So, I do have a grasp of moderately simple sentences (with a very
> restricted vocabulary, that is), but I often find myself bumping my
> mind either on Lojban grammar or on the underlying logic in general.
> Which is probably why Lojban is such a nice thing. :)
>
> I have now succeeded in confusing myself most utterly with the
> following (made-up) Lojban question and answers:
>
>  lo munje cu se cupra ma
>
> a) no da
> b) zi'o
> c) na'i
> d) vo'a
> e) ri
> f) ri poi cevni [feeling a little bit panentheistic here ...?]
>
> Now, my questions are partly about the meaning (in this context) of
> the cmavo involved, and partly about syntactical correctness:
>
> If the premise be that the world as such has not been produced/built/
> created by any entity (so, more or less the common sense assumption
> that the world just there, and that's about it ...)---could anybody
> please help me understand the difference in meaning between answers a)
> and b), and b) and c)?
>
> I think that a) is about an empty set of world-creators. But could we,
> then, still say that the world is "se cupra"? Probably yes, since, if
> not, would a) not *entail c)?
>

    a) states that there are no creators of the world.  Therefore the
world is not a creation.  Can you then assert that the world is a se
cupra?  Well, only if there is a negation of some sort there, as you
have ("lo munje se cupra no da").


>
> b) looks like a normal "fill-in-the-sumti" answer to a "ma"-question,
> but does in fact turn the bridi "se cupra" into the different bridi
> "se cupra zi'o", doesn't it? Is that grammatically, pragmatically
> possible? What does it mean?
>

  It would mean a thing that is created but without a creating agent.
It's hard to imagine, which is why zi'o isn't often used ;-)

> And c) seems to claim that it is not meaningful to say of the world
> that it is created by somebody---does that mean that "lo munje cu se
> cupra no da" isn't meaningful, either?

   No, although a) does imply c) (but not vice versa).  There is
something wrong on a meta-level about you asking what created the
world.
>
> And, finally, if I were to claim that the world created itself
> (whatever that may mean), would answers d) to f) be grammatically
> correct, and would they refer to "lo munje", as intended?
>

  I believe they would, yes, since answers to ma questions fill in the
blank in the original question.

                --gejyspa

> (If something like this has already been discussed, could you point me
> to it? I didn't find it then, sorry.)
>
> Thanks
> Paul Fährbrorn
>
> PS: I'm learning Lojban through English, but I'm not a native English
> speaker. Please be forbearing with regard to quirky English.
>
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