Re: [lojban] Re: semantic primes

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

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

> On 3/22/06, John E Clifford
> <clifford-j@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> > > For example
> > > "SOMETHING"
> > > does not have to be an object, it can also
> be
> > > an action, as in
> > > "I do something", but presumably it cannot
> be a
> > > person, so
> > > there is no direct equivalent in Lojban {lo
> > > dacti} covers too little
> > > and {da} covers too much.
> >
> > But it is definitely an existential
> quantifier,
> > not a noun phrase -- and not quantitative
> ({su'o}
> > -- a distinction hard to make in Lojban or
> > English).
> 
> Not sure what you mean. Wierzbicka lists
> SOMETHING/THING as
> a substantive, together with I, YOU, SOMEONE,
> PEOPLE and BODY,
> and SOME as a separate quantifier, together
> with ONE, TWO, ALL
> and MANY/MUCH. So at least in their system it
> seems to be a noun
> phrase.
>
Ooops!  I am on the wrong page.  Yes, this is
THING in some sense or other, so indefinite as to
include events, actions and the like.  How vague
is {dacti} (I seem to recall some dispute about
that or a similar word a long time ago but don't
remeber the upshot).

> > Well, there is the logical argument for there
> > being a single distinctive list of primes.
> 
> A not very convincing one, for my taste.

I'm never sure what will convince you of
anything.  this eems pretty knock-down-drag-out:
if there are no primes then all definitions are
ultimately circular.  To be sure, we can avoid
this in practical terms for a very long time,
maybe forever, but the threat is always there in
primeless systems.
> 
> >  I think that ultimately a universal
> > set of primes is called for, whether the NSM
> set
> > or another (and it is unclear that the NSM
> set is
> > adequate, despite the best efforts of its
> supporters).
> 
> At first glance it seems rather inadequate. It
> is not very clear
> why they have so many pairs of opposites
> instead of just having
> OPPOSITE as a prime. (I'm not even sure how
> they define OPPOSITE
> in terms of their primes.)
> 
I asked about that.  The simple fact is that many
languages (English, for example) don't have an
OPPOSITE that functions in the appropriate way
(like Esperanto mal- or aUI y-).  Defining
OPPOSITE may be a problem but it is relatively
insignificant compared to the problems with color
words, natural kinds and artifacts, most of which
are dealt with so far by unreliable verbal
pointing (green is the color of grass -- without
using the words "color" or "grass" -- which only
works for people that have grass (and can
distinguish it in the definition, "things grow
out of the ground," from trees and mushrooms)).
The curious thing is that these problems have
been mentioned since 1972 for the project and
amazingly little has been done to solve them,
suggesting to the impatient observer that they
cannot be solved within the present framework. 
And no obvious extension has turned up either. 
Most other prime systems take a few colors and
some principles of mixing as basic (and a few
kinds and artifacts too) and go on from there. 
The problem for colors is that no system is going
to be universal, since some languages have only
DARK and LIGHT (and maybe RED).  The pointing
seems to be on the right track for kinds and
artifacts, since, by and large, we get these
notions by osrtention, not defintion, and then
the thing is what it is regardless of whther the
"definition" is correct: water would still be
water even if its formula turned out to be say
HO.