Re: [lojban] Re: xorlo podcast

[John E Clifford <clifford-j@sbcglobal.net>]

I don't expect xorxes to keep track of all my
quirks; I certainly don't of his.  However, I
find his claim not to know what version of {lo} I
am talking about somewhat less than candid.  We
have been discussing {lo} for almost as long as
xorxes has been dealing with Lojban and very
intensely again over the last couple of years --
especially since the official xorlo proposal was
put forth -- both on these forums and in private
communication.  The technical details of prelo --
admittedly a new term since I got tired of
writing "the previously acccepted version of
{lo}" but one introduced with what was in context
an adequate explanation -- were put up on the
wiki and xorxes commented on that paper
(http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Lojban%20Formulae)
in some detail.  xorxes was active in the
creation of prelo and at one time seemed to say
he was using it (though I suspect that what he
was using was an early version of xorlo -- they
hard to tell apart except in details that may not
turn up for a while).  Admittedly it has been
almost a month since the last go-round on {lo},
but I -- with my notoriously bad memory -- still
remember most of the details of xorxes' weird
scheme.  I would expect the same in return.

--- Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 9/28/05, John E Clifford
> <clifford-j@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> > You know, I don't think I've ever seen this
> > particular construction before, so I forgot
> the
> > {lu'u}. In fact, I don't think I've ever used
> > {lu'u} though I should have seen the
> ambiguity
> > (well, not in Lojban, of course) as I wrote
> it.
> > So maybe it is not quite automatic after all.
> 
> {lu'u} is rare, yes, I don't think I've seen it
> much
> either. Probably because
> la'e/lu'e/tu'a/lu'a/lu'i/lu'o/vu'i
> are themselves rare. Except for {la'e} in {la'e
> di'u}, if
> they all disappeared I probably wouldn't miss
> them.

Working on somewhat different material, I have
found uses for most of these, some of them rather
frequently (the devices for moving between
bunches and masses and even occasionally those
involving sets).  There are other sets of things
(the typesetting cmavo, for example) that I would
see dropped much more readily.
 
> > Well, of course, your {mi terpa lo jukni}
> doesn't
> > exactly mean "I fear spiders" either, since,
> if
> > it were true as written, you would spend your
> > entire life in terror because there are
> spiders.
> 
> I don't think {terpa} means "x1 spends their
> life in
> terror because there is x2". Compare with
> {prami}:
> {mi do prami} doesn't mean that I'm in a
> permanent
> state of bliss because you exist, and similarly
> {mi do terpa} doesn't mean I spend my entire
> life
> in terror because you exist, and the same goes
> for spiders. At least that's how I understand
> {terpa}.

As you well know, I do not think that terpa means
anything like that (nor did I say it did).  The
situation described is the result of the simple
{mi terpa lo jukni} being true: since you have an
unconditioanl fear of spiders, you would then be
afraid of any situation involving spiders,
including their bare existence, so, since they
exist, you must be in constant fear.  This is the
reason for insisting that {terpa} and many other
brivla take abstracts as arguments in Lojban in
spite of the fact that English -- and most other
languages I can think of -- take apparently
concrete expressions (of course, in xorlo {lo
jukni} is abstract in fact, but that is a
differnt point).
  
The point about {prami} is an interesting one,
which I can't find having been raised before.
{prami} is labelled to take both objects and
events as arguments.  Afirst look at cases seems
to point to the distinction being a specific
generic distinction {mi prami la miumium} vs. {mi
prami tu'a lo mlatu}.  Of course, this may just
be a reflection of the convention about allowing
things that are known to exist and to be the
target of whatever is the predicate to be
presented without the {tu'a} -- since fronting is
valid.  But we would probably also say {mi prami
la barbarelas), mentioning a nonexistent object.
Of course, this may be handled by any of several
conventions (probably the expanded domain works
best here -- and allows fronting and
generalization).  In addition, we feel
intuitively that our love for our beloeved is not
a love for various events in which she
participates but for *her,* different in kind
from that for events and even generic references.
 However, {prami} is eventually worked out.  It
does seem that {terpa} should be worked out in a
similar way -- although the intuition about
fearing someone rather than their acts is
somewhat weaker in this case.

> 
> > > I took "prelo" to be CLL-lo, that's the one
> > > xorlo replaced.
> >
> > Wrong-o+, as you well know.  No one really
> used
> > CLL-lo in this century.
> 
> Huh? CLL was published in 1997, so in a sense
> most of its use
> was in this century. {lo} = {su'o lo} predates
> CLL by a good
> bit, it was already in place at least in 1994
> when I started with
> Lojban. And it was used, by me and others, this
> century and last.

Well, CLL codified practices and pronouncements
from earlier, so it was used before it appaered. 
Indeed, my recollection is that the shift to
prelo took place before or soon after CLL
appeared (it existed in various forms for some
time before publication).  
{lo broda} =  {su'o lo ro broda} goes back to
Loglan (before 1975, probably before 1960, but I
can't check now).  Dealing with that given went
in at least two steps 1) dropping the official
default quantifiers both inside and out and 2)
changing the implicit quantifiers on {lo} to
match those on {le}, {lo broda} = {ro lo su'o
broda} (before you took the further step of
reinterpeting the the internal quantifier as
predicative and the external one as
multiplicative).  Both of the changes were in
place by 2000 and you appeared to claim to be
suing them at that time (but, in retrospect, I
can see that you were already going beyond them
to early versions of xorlo).  the reasons for the
shift were many, but the central one was just
that we used the sense of the new version several
items of magnitude more often than the old one,
that is, we talk about bunches of brodas much
more often than we talk about all brodas.

 
> > The problems with
> > practical applications and the differences
> from
> > {le}, that worked about right, led to the
> > discussions which reached some agreement
> about
> > how to proceed (getting that official was one
> > spring to BPFK, in fact).  On the
> technicality
> > you are correct; xorlo is the new *official*
> > Lojban {lo}
> 
> (Not quite yet, but hopefully some time soon.)

I, on the other hand, think that that would be a
cataclysm from the logical point of view (which
is my main interest in all this), achieved (if
that is the word) with no visible gain in any
respect, except to legitimize some ancient
solecisms (and I don't see that as a gain in any
real sense).

 
> > but as the operant system it replaces
> > the intermediate prelo -- which you also
> largely
> > created.
> 
> Since prelo is a new term you just came up
> with, I couldn't
> have known what you meant by it. And I still
> don't. There was
> a lot of discussion before xorlo jelled, but I
> don't recall any
> specific intermediate proposal that deserves a
> name.

See earlier comments.
> 
> > > Is {mi terpa tu'a lo jukni} = {mi terpa
> tu'a ro
> > > lo jukni}
> > > in prelo?
> > >
> > > What would the understood predicate be
> like?
> >
> > I would suppose so, though I haven't thought
> > through the consequences.  Well, it isn't
> > technically an understood predicate just an
> > unspecified one.  To make it true, I would
> > suppose that generally, in both cases (since
> they
> > are pretty much equivalent), it would be
> > something like "I see x" or "x touches me" or
> "x
> > bites me" or whatever your fear really is of.
> 
> But "I fear spiders" can't be "I fear that for
> all x which
> is a spider, x touches me". If anything it
> would be
> closer to "I fear that for at least one x which
> is a
> spider, x touches me".
> 
Well, if you have really been paying so little
attention (which would probably explain some of
the odd things you say), {lo jukni} = {ro lo su'o
jukni} does in fact amount to "for some x, x is
is a spide and ...," literally, every member of
some bunch of spiders, where -- in prelo -- the
"some" is buried to prevent the question "Which bunch?"