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Re: [lojban] Re: A (rather long) discussion of {all}
On 7/12/06, John E Clifford <clifford-j@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
--- Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/11/06, John E Clifford <clifford-j@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> > Since this sounds a little like one pseudo-Whorfian hypothesis case, I give the usual counter:
> > maybe people tend to make a strong divide between 1 and >1 because so many languages have a
> > singular/plural distinction. Causation is hard to work out when the two phenomena are known
> only simultaneously.
> >
>
> Like I said, it's something to consider. I currently don't have a
> proof that this distinction proves my theory, but it is something that
> seems very relevant. To me it seems natural that the distinction is,
> and can only be, that our mind treats "a dog", and "the dogs" using
> different structures (and not by 'loading', say, 1 identity that is a
> dog, and then 152 identities that are each a dog), though both are
> singular, all in the way that I described.
>
> You should note that I don't go about repeatedly asserting that this
> is the case, and that my position does not rely on something that
> doesn't have a proof, as this doesn't, in order to be sensible. I
> would like for proponents of the pluralist position to do the same.
> This special plural-singular "variable" thing really isn't proven. I
> don't even see how it can make sense, unless there is a perception of
> the mind that differs drastically from mine.
Promissory note (building all the details to suit your particular version of singularism takes a
while): there are not special plural variables, just variables which may take any (positive)
number of referents.
> On 7/11/06, Jorge Llamb�as <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 7/11/06, Maxim Katcharov <maxim.katcharov@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Are these 'dual/trial numbers' as pervasive as the "1 vs >1"
> > > distinction in those languages?
> >
> > The grammatical distinction in English (and the other languages I'm familiar
> > with) is not exactly between 1 and >1, but rather between 1 and non-1. We
> > do use the plural for <1 too: "zero zebras", "0.5 kilograms", "minus one
> > degrees", etc.
> >
>
> Yes, 1 and !1 is a better way to phrase it. I thought that it was
> obvious that this is what I was getting at, considering my
> explanations. I did go on about how a singular entity is conceived in
> a way that is quite different from a numbered entity.
>
Not sure I understand this; there are only singular entities but sometimes several of them are
taken together (which singularist think of as constituting another entity).
What does "taken together" mean? With my verbal doodles of "strands"
between concepts and identities, I showed how my view works. If I try
to imagine an analogous picture of your view of all this, what I see
is you waving your hand in the general direction of these 'singular
entities taken together', and that's it. In some way, but without any
concrete relationships defined in the mind, these 26 students are
related to the building.
> On 7/11/06, And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I confess I haven't been reading this thread, whose interminability reminds me of the olden
> days of Lojban list. So forgive me if I repeat things that have already been said.
> >
> > 1. I believe that there are implicational universals governing grammatical number
> distinctions, namely if there are only two categories they are singular and plural, if there is
> a trial then there is a dual, and so forth. For the unlazy, see Corbett's _Number_ (reference on
> the Wiki page).
> >
> > 2. It was my immersion in lojbanology that made me realize that there is something somehow
> fundamental to the singular--plural distinction, in that only plurals, and not singulars, are
> sensitive to a collective--distributive distinction.
>
> Good point. I'd like to know how this is accounted for in the
> pluralist system (or rather, the system that opposes mine). If not
> because of how I describe things to work, then why is it that it is
> strange and perhaps impossible to treat singulars collectively?
Actually, the problem turns out to be to treat singulars distributively, but even then the problem
By my view, singulars are treated neither collectively nor
distributively. I was only guessing at how you would treat them.
is just that the two are equivalent: whatever is true of an individual distributively is true of
it collectively and vv. So it is hard (pointless?) to figure out which is meant.
Neither a collective nor distributive relationship exists. Quoting myself:
ro le panono tadni cu dasni lo mapku
There are 2 identities (X and Y), both are plurals. X is the students,
Y is the hats. X, the thing that is the students has 100 of them. They
are related with 'wears' distributively (which I know to mean that
if a new identity was a 'component' of X, then it would follow that it
would be wearing some component of Y). Furthermore, I assume that the
distributive relationship is 1to1: during the time that we care to
communicate about, students probably aren't switching 2 hats amongst
themselves, and each student has their own hat.
So these plural (distributive and collective) entities are both
actually handled by something singular. I offer that "a human cannot
conceive of 100 identities. If he does not conceive of each, and yet
conceives of something with 100 as its number, then what is it that he
has in his head? Some one thing else." proves that a position that
suggests that there are in fact 100 things in our mind that we
predicate things of is wrong. If language should be a reflection of
thought, then it would be wrong to use structures that suggest this.
> >
> > 3. It may be hard to prove that typological patterns across languages reflect human cognition
> rather than human cognition reflecting unexplained typological patterns. But the former
> (counterwhorfian) direction of causation is more explanatory.
>
> I assume that language is based on cognition. Yes, a mind may be
> affected by the lack of certain relationships, but I think that we
> have a diverse enough number of languages to say that it is strange
> that the distinction between 1 vs !1 is so pervasive/universal. I find
> it hard to believe that some lack of a 1/2 vs !1/2 concept 1000000
> years ago is what is responsible for this global 1 vs !1 distinction.
"global" is a little strong, maybe "widespread" and maybe more common than any alternative: duals,
trials or no distinction -- or all of them together. Note that for Sapir-Whorf, all of these
except the no distinction case poastulate an underlying SAE-type world view of countable isolated
determinate objects.
What do you mean by 'countable isolated determinate'?
I don't see what you're getting at with SAE - even the plural in
Chinese chops it at 1 and !1. Are you going to suggest that it was
some prehistoric language that influenced, and continues to influence
(even with the inevitable linguistic mutations that would be sure to
occur) all human thought to drawing the distinction between 1 and !1,
and that '1or2 and !1or2' or even '2 and !2' could have been just as
probable variants?
> >
> > --And.
> >
>
>
> xorxes had asked:
>
> > How does your mind manage to process:
> > ro le panono tadni cu dasni lo mapku
> > then?
>
> I'd like to ask the same of my opposition, of those that think that in
> our mind, there is only those 152 students, and nothing else. I argue
> that you can't have 152 students in your mind in the first place,
> which makes this perception of language inconsistent with how the mind
> works.
To which the reply largely is that there is no particular reason -- even given Sapir-Whorf -- to
think that language reflects in any direct way the way the mind works (whatever that may mean). we
can clearly talk about 100 students without thinking about each of them in full individuality and
without thinking about some set that encompasses them (unless you insist that thinking about them
in this way just IS thinking about some set that encompasses them).
Language is meant to communicate thought. The most ideal language is
the one that can pass along my thoughts, in a perfectly intact form,
directly into your brain. It follows that the criteria for judging a
language is how reflective it is of thought. If you don't agree with
this, then I have no idea what you think language is, and what it's
for, and what it should be.
The reason we can clearly talk about 100 students without conceiving
of 100 identities is because because we use only 1 identity to
represent "100 students" (arguably 2, I'm not sure if '100' should be
treated as a concept or an identity. I lean towards concept). This
explanation (my account of how thought works) answers: Why is the
distinction drawn at 1? Why is it that we can forget the exact number
of students without breaking the relationship between 'the 100
students' and 'the building'? (And quite importantly) How do we
conceive of these 100 students without conceiving of 100 individual
students? (And probably others.)