In a message dated 10/7/2001 4:24:46 PM Central Daylight Time, rob@twcny.rr.com writes:
On Sun, Oct 07, 2001 at 03:47:16PM -0400, pycyn@aol.com wrote: Gee, after thirty odd years of teaching Goedel theory, I thought I had a grasp on recursion. Apparently I was wrong, because it has something to do with reflexive relations and two terms meaning the same thingand one term meaning something that only has meaning after the term has a meaning and God knows what all else. What *are* you talking about? Lojban IS parsed left to right and has to be resolved grammatically in that way. Happily, the issue here is semantic/pragmatic -- about the referent of {nei}. {nei} stands in place for a BRIDI of which the _expression_ containing {nei} is a part. Assuming that the meaning of a phrase is a compound of the meanings of its components, the meaning of the BRIDI containing {nei} is composed in part of the meaning of {nei}, which of course, just is the meaning of the _expression_ in which the {nei} occurs. So, in order to get the meaning of {nei} you have to already have the meaning of {nei}. thus you can never get the meaning of {nei} and so not of the whole BRIDI in which it occurs and so not of the passage in whichthey occur and so on. This line of argument is, of course, abysmal sophistry. {nei} hasno meaning outside of {le nei}, {le se nei} and the like and it refers notto meanings but to forms. To be sure, using {le se nei} or {le te nei} in the second place creates problems somewhat like "the first man on Mars" does now -- or maybe a bit worse, but no one --except the metaLojbanists, naturally -- is going to do that; it ruins communication. <> <* What follows le is a bridi by your definition, but it is not the specific > ? entry in the parser that we usually refer to when we say "bridi". For > ? example, you can't put {mi klama le zarci} in {le}. {le} createsa bridi out > ? of the pseudo-bridi which follows it, and takes the x1 out of it. This bridi > ? is not part of the sentence> > > Yes, it is not a BRIDI because it contains {be} and the rest -- not because > it doesn't have an x1. {le} doesn't make it a BRIDI out of the bridi tail > that follows it nor does it take a BRIDI and make something else out of it by > dropping x1 and replacing it with {le} (although that is closer). The result > of putting {le} in front of a bridi tail IS a part of thes entence-- where > else would it be? I think I am missing your point here. Whose "bridi" are > you talking about, not mine and not what I understood your to be. Let me try this again with a specific example: {mi viska lo broda be le brode}. (lo is easier to work with than le.) The pseudo-bridi is {broda be le brode} (where did I say anything aboutnot having an x1 making it not a BRIDI? It's not a BRIDI because it's not parsed as one.) {le} makes this into an actual bridi: {ko'a broda le brode}. {ko'a broda le brode} never becomes part of the sentence. It's a bit abstract, but if you can't understand this concept we're at an impasse. The imaginary {ko'a} does become part of the sentence, as the referent of {lo broda be le brode}. The result is that the sentence is {mi viska ko'a}, with that ko'a not really there, but referring to the same thing as {ko'a broda le brode}. I could do this without constructing a separate bridi, using poi and voi, but I assume that's what And is doing which you object to.> Nice, albeit incomplete, transformational grammar explanation of {lo broda be le broda}. So, in fact you were not talking about either bridior BRIDI but something that has no reality at all in Lojban grammar. A word of warning would have been nice: "makes this into" and the like lead me to look for these things which, as it turns out, are nowhere at all, but merely theoretical figments of some grammarian's imagination -- albeit handy ones for many purposes. [Since I could read Logic and knew Adjukewicz arithmetic, I did much of the teaching at the first seminars on linguistic theory at UCLA, until they bought a pro.] Of course, I know how all this goes -- it was what I meant by reminding And that {le broda be le brode} is a bridi (indeed a BRIDI). I am still a little puzzled by how an imaginary {ko'a} becomes a part of a real sentence,or is the reference, in either sense, of anything. But, at least I see what you were trying to say, and I agree with it wholeheartedly. Thanks for the support. Notice, by the way, that, according to you last time (and immediately below) {poi} also creeates a separate BRIDI. I don't object to And doing this (indeed, I want to insist on); I just object to his tarting this trivial maneuver up as some marvelous thing that somehow proves that {le mamta be ce'u} is unacceptable. Since it is merely definitional, I don't see that it proves anyhting -- except that {ce'u} is not a sumti in the construction, which we all knew all along, or should ahve. <Notice that what ahppens in And's rule -- one version > anyhow -- is that he makes the containing "sumti" disappear butexactly > replaces it with a new sumti which contains a BRIDI and the same internal > sumti and such that the whole means the same (officially) -- and this somehow > is to prove that the internal sumti, which now is clearly at a different > level from the sumti it is contained in was previously at the samelevel as > the sumti it was contained in. I just don't see how it follows,but in any > case the transformation that is done is trivial and has no bearingon the > issue at hand. The conversation between you and And soared to great levels of abstraction. You two couldn't understand each other, so I rather doubt I could. If that is in fact what And meant, it's nonsense. A sumti does not contain a BRIDI. It might contain words which would be a BRIDI if they weren't ina sumti, but since they are in a sumti, they aren't a BRIDI.> I make no guarantees about what And means or what he will say he means next. But so far as I can see, your comments are either not relevant to And's point (if you are talking about {le broda be le brode} where he also insists there is no BRIDI) or contradict yourself (if about {ko'a poi broda le brode} which And insists does contain a BRIDI and which you, too, seem to have said contains one -- and, indeed, I insist it contains one). |