tech:opaque

["John E. Clifford" <pcliffje@CRL.COM>]

& (to pc):
Replying to pc:
I think here we're really getting to the crux of the debate.
I think:
  The rules of the language are already clear enough to tell us
  that [on the whole] the only source of opacity is through bridi
  subordination, even if the community of users [barring Jorge] has
  not realized this so far.
You think:
  The community of users understand opacity from sources additional
  to bridi subordination; therefore we need some rules to regulate
  this understanding and some cmavo to signal it.
pc:
Pretty close.  Actually, I think that virtually all opacity is bridi
subordination, but that some cases of subordination are
encapsulated in lexical items, so that -- to take an English example
which is relatively safe  -- "hunt" has in reality the same structure
as "intends/desires that ... TAKE ---", where the ... is filled by the
subject of "hunt" and the --- by the object, which is thus
subordinated in an intentional context. (TAKE is a shorthand for a
concept of trophyizing, whether it involve killing or trapping or
just seeing or photographing or whatever.)  The only case that I am
not sure is bridi subordination is artistic representation and there,
for the most part, it might be, to the point that I am willing to treat
it as such, with _tu'a_ in Lojban, for example.
&:
(i) Gismu glosses are merely approximate indications of the actual sense
of the gismu. There is no guarantee that the gismu means whatever its
keyword gloss means. The actual sense of the gismu is partly determined
by its place structure, with the rest to be filled out by current
and future usage. Thus nothing can reliably be inferred from the
keyword "hunt".
pc:
How often have I said this myself! Ah well!  But still, my
occasions have, it seems to me, been about minor points, not
central issues -- the difference between "hunt" and "search for," for
example -- not the difference between an inherently opacizing
concept and "something just like it but not opaque," the which
there ain't.  Now, lojbab said on another thread just recently that
none of the gismu are actually defined.  I assume that he means
that we only have English-based guides to how to use them, not
actual specifications of what they mean.  My problem is that the
guidelines for _kalte_ as & et x present it (claiming that it is what
the list actually says) gives me no clue at all about how to use this
word.  It is not, for example, the word to use at the bottom of the
clauses that say the English "hunt," since that is an achievement
word, not an activity or process word.  Nor can I use it just to
describe an activity or process unless I know that the process will
be completed or the activity involves a specifiable target, neither
of which is generally possible when I want to talk about the at first
glance rather similar activity or process which I English as
hunting.  The current version of _sisku_ is admittedly worse, but is
little helped by the semantic guarantee of success.

As for how to opacize places which are not so officially -- which, if the
&x version is an accurate report of the present situation, seems the best
way to save the day (though I dislike it intensely, from my older point of
view -- opacity is not a new discovery but just once was assumed to be in
order as it was in all the source langauges, not just English) -- the
obvious selma'o is LAhE, which contains all those strange descriptors that
attach to already over descriptored expressions to convert them into even
stranger descriptions (or descriptions of even stranger things): right
grammar: attaches to sumti;  semantics so obscure as to permit this move
to another world without seeming out of place.

pc>|83