Re: [lojban] Retraction, Part 1

[Nick NICHOLAS <nicholas@uci.edu>]

I am not going to respond to all of this, because I have little interest
in perpetuating the argling. It is a mistake, I admit, to say even this
much.

On Mon, 20 Aug 2001, Bob LeChevalier (lojbab) wrote:

> At 03:47 AM 8/19/01 -0700, Nick Nicholas wrote:
> I will say first that if nothing else, Nick's reemergence into active
> Lojban use provides a much more productive environment for moving these
> discussions along towards possible consensus.

You have said this to me before privately, and I am no longer confident it
is true. In particular with {ce'u}, there was an emerging consensus, and I
got in
the way of it because my understanding of {ka} was antiquated. And while I
still seek consensus, I am not confident I am now the solidifier I may
have once been. (It seems I did not used to be a "hardliner".)

> With Nick absent, I have
> always felt that a big chunk of the usage community was going
> unrepresented.  I wish that Ivan and Goran also were participating

I cannot agree with this either. While I or Ivan or Goran are absent, we
forfeit any right to representation. And God bless Ivan, but if you think
there are rankles between Lojbanists on the list now, I shudder to think
what he'd kick up with half the stuff going on.

> (Nick, feel free to add my response to the Wiki in whole or part as
> appropriate, if your comments are also posted there.  I don't have time to
> write the same thing in two incompatible forums.)

For now, I am disinclined to do so, and welcome anyone else doing it. I
may change my mind in time.

> >1. I retract the hierarchy se papri < cukta < se tcidu < cukta
> >The characteristically Lojbanic pedantry of Pierre and Xod in pointing out
> >the error to the hierarchy proves my point, in fact :-)
> There seems to be context missing, presumably context that will be found on
> the Wiki.

The context was on this mailing list:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lojban/message/9720,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lojban/message/9723

> It seems to me that the result of the Wiki is a side-channel
> discussion that most on the list are not privy to.

The Wiki is publically available at http://nuzban.wiw.org/wiki . "not
privy to" is at best misleading. And given recent traffic there, "most on
the list" (and not just those active on the list!) is probably inaccurate
too.

> Under prototypical semantics as I understand it, almost anything that is le
> jipci can probably also be seen as lo jipci given enough context,

Are you now saying that the "le ninmu" = "lo nanmu" (transvestite) example
is inapplicable? Or are you saying that given enough context, a
transvestite conventionally described as "le ninmu" can also be seen as
"lo ninmu"? Given that I thought this was settled, I am surprised that
"le jipci" applying to "lo jipci simsa" is controversial.

... On the other hand, I now see in the refgramm that "le" is defined as
+definite -veridical, and not as I remembered it, +/-definite -veridical.
This now looks like a misconstrual on my part, again because of antiquated
understanding of the language (previous teaching material, to my
recollection, emphasised non-veridicality to the exclusion of
definiteness.) So I will probably drop the
illustration of non-veridicality completely (or at least try and factor
the definiteness out of it.)

> Where I resist on the final sentence is the last 4 words "intended for
> common use".  I don't think people should be coining lujvo "for common
> use", but rather should be coining lujvo for a specific contextual use.  If
> an existing lujvo works in other contexts, then it becomes MORE commonly in
> use, but this is something that probably cannot be intended in advance.

We continue to disagree with this. (We had a vociferous exchange on
"mutmi'i" becoming standard in December, you might recall.) I think the
Helsem-LeChevalier attitude to lujvo makes a dictionary pretty useless,
myself (which is why Helsem doesn't even want a dictionary), and is not
what people want in practice. But this is a philosophical disagreement, so
nothing will come of it.

> I remain uncertain why there is such an issue.  It seems that people
> nowadays want there to be a default explicitly defined for everything in
> the language that can be ellipsized, whereas the norm of the language is
> that all features are optional, with no true "default" other than what is
> indicated by context.

Again, philosophical disagreement.

> I can use ce'u in multiple modes, and believe I did use ce'u above
> correctly by both others' standards and my own to specifically highlight
> that the x1 place was being focused on.  I think that most ce'u usage
> either explicit or default has a clear place that is being filled in.  But
> when I talk about "ka melbi" meaning the abstraction "Beauty", I BELIEVE
> that I am NOT focusing on any specific place, but rather could be inserting
> ce'uxitu'o in each place of melbi, as well as in any
> appropriate-for-context modal places.

Can I ask you to be even more clear? Do you believe that every {ka}
abstraction must have at least one {ce'u} in its place structure, though
which one it is (including modal places) is left to pragmatics?

If you do, well and good. If not, you are the only active Lojbanist left
who has publically said he does --- though I now note pc being slightly
slippery. :-)

(I know you will say "what of Mark, Ivan,
etc." I will say again, it's their responsibility to come forth. And like
me, their recollection of the language will reflect its status in 1993,
not its status in the Refgramm. {ce'u} is ultimately alien to all
'Tweeners but xorxes, who was the only 'Tweener still around in 1997.)

('Tweeners, as defined on the wiki, being what you would call Jimbobs, but
restricted to those who joined Lojban in the early '90s.)

> Remember that some of us haven't yet gotten that far.  To the extent that
> you wish the new book to set and add to standards for the language, you
> will have to be prepared for it to take a while.  Cowan's refgrammar
> existed as draft chapters for 3 years before it was settled enough to be
> published, and we STILL made a lot of last minute corrections and people
> are still finding errata.  Your ce'u chapters haven't existed more than a
> couple of months.

So that I understand this, there is a real possibility that it will take
years rather than months for the content of the lessons to be reviewed and
finalised. Yes?

> >  But
> >whether I'm vexed or not is not the point; the point is that this issue is
> >not uncontroversial (indeed, it's almost uncontroversially wrong), and
> >cannot be spoken of as it has been. The issue of filling {ce'u} places will
> >therefore not be raised in the lessons at all.
> Good.

So that you explicitly understand: Filling {ce'u} places is now regarded
by the majority of active Lojbanists (including myself, reluctantly) as
wrong.

> >If not, I will attempt to write a
> >revised lesson section, outlining what now seems to be majority opinion,
> >and will solicit people look at it carefully, to make sure I get it right.

I am now going to go ahead and do so, though I cannot promise to do this
this week.

> >It's now also
> >looking like the second understanding interprets {le ka mi xendo} as "my
> >property of being kind",
> Without context specifying that I am focusing on any other place.

The point is not the focus. The point is that the overwhelming consensus
here is that {ce'u} places cannot be filled in with explicit sumti; so
inasmuch as the expression "my property..." is meaningful at all
("kindness, as predicated of me"), "le ka mi xendo" cannot translate it:
it can only be a property of those to whom kindness is shown, or the
standard of kindness, or whatever, but not of the person showing the
kindness. In *any* syntactic context.

In other words, {le ka mi xendo} is not an instance of {le ka ce'u xendo}.

This, I think you'll agree, breaks existing usage, because (a) {le ka mi
xendo} is the naive translation of "my kindness", and (b) "my kindness" is
plausibly taken as being a property of me.

> >and the first as "my being kind (to others)", read
> >as a property of the others
> That may likely be the most common interpretation IN CONTEXT where a
> specific ce'u place is needed.

>From your example, I think you're doing what I did when I attempted to
make sense of the Refgramm's usage: where {ka} is subcategorised by the
gismu (the gismu list says "insert ka here"), you focus on a particular
place (ce'u is unfilled). But in the general case (x1, sumti tcita) you
don't focus on
a particular place, so ce'u is absent or irrelevant, and {le ka mi xendo}
can still mean "my kindness" or whatever else.

This means in the general case that {ka} is not an intension --- a
property *of* something, ellipsed or not ---

> concrete and filled in bridi, whereas ka without ce'u is the one way in
> which we can talk about what makes a bridi true in an  *abstract* sense
> WITHOUT filling in all the places, while still acknowledging that they
> exist.  I thus think of du'u as much more akin to nu than to ka.

I don't think this is what most think, and I think you're pressing {ka} to
do things it shouldn't. I have no interest in defending this, since that
is the job of Adam, John, And, etc., who have argued this through in the
first place.

> >As I'd originally written in this email, if it can be stated (as it just
> >has been by And) that the example phrase Refgramm 11.4.4 {le ka do xunre cu
> >cnino mi} is wrong,
> It is grammatical.  It is merely a question of what it means, which may be
> hard to express in English.  The refgrammar was first and foremost about
> grammar and not about meaning.

Disingenuous. The Refgramm says "mi djuno lenu la frank. cu bebna" is
'not quite right', and makes a claim "that Frank's being-a-fool is purely
a mental activity on the part of the speaker. (In fact, Example 7.2 is an
instance of improperly marked ``sumti raising''.)" This means that "mi
djuno lenu la frank. cu bebna" is grammatical, but close to meaningless;
it certainly doesn't mean what you might naively think it means.

{le ka do xunre cu cnino mi}, it has now been claimed, falls in a similar
category.

> >and should have been {nu}, then a major shift has gone
> >on in how {ka} is understood by a significant part of the community, and we
> >have serious consequences for the community.
> There are no consequences unless people insist on consequences.

This, lamentably, is true. I want this settled, because I want to say
something coherent on {ka} for the lessons. You don't, for reasons we've
all been through.

So I await with interest your response when I write my new lesson
subsection on {ka}. I cannot promise you'll like it.

> I don't agree that there are ANY errata in the refgrammar.  If there are
> mistakes, then ignore what the refgrammar says, but do so in usage and at
> peril of being misunderstood.  If everyone IN LANGUAGE agrees to be
> understood a certain way when using a certain expression, then the
> refgrammar is trumped by usage, and I will not be justified to complain (at
> least not in English).

Philosophical disagreement. John, I hate to put you on the spot, but you
have yourself acceeded to using the word 'errata'. Should any emendation
to the refgramm treatment of {ka} be left to usage and informal, or
written up and formalised? I think I know what the answer is, though...

> And I say that the way to "fix" this is to use the language however you
> choose, then write the lessons based on usage and not based on the
> refgrammar, but then say up front that you are basing the teaching on
> actual usage even where at times it may violate the refgrammar and then
> indicating when you teach the specific item that you are not teaching in
> accordance with the standard, but rather in accordance with usage.  This
> then leaves it to each new student to decide for themselves between the
> standard and the usage, knowing that they differ.  If they choose to follow
> existing usage, then so be it.

If I leave it to usage before now, I document your understanding of {ka},
because that's how {ka} was used until people woke up to {ce'u}.

If I leave it to usage from this point on, I document the majority
understanding of {ka}, because people are now awake to {ce'u}.

If I document the standard, the standard is inconsistent (but leans
towards the latter.)

If I document both approaches, I am airing dirty laundry in public. You're
cool with that. I'm not. I have yielded before, but because the refgramm
seriously leans towards regarding {ka} as an intension in all cases (and
the refgramm author now says it always should, and didn't only because of
confusion), I'm somewhat reluctant to. Once more, I solicit others'
opinions.

If I delete the subsection, then so be it. I'd much rather not.

> Put another way, I have in part fought for 2-3 years to keep some decisions
> from being accepted because I knew intuitively that you as the most skilled
> speaker of the language would disagree with them, even where I was not sure
> what the right decision would be.  You should be involved in decisions
> about the future of the language, and so should Nora, and Goran and Ivan
> and a whole bunch of others, and it simply is not possible in short order
> for everyone to visit the site of controversy at the moment and make a
> momentary decision that might be right or might be wrong.

I explicitly repudiate this. If I am not active, I forfeit any right to
decide anything. There are several things that have happened with
Lojban in my absence that I dislike; but I think it folly that they
should not have been decided on until I bothered to show up again. And I
repudiate the label of most skilled speaker, as I
have already done, both because I think it is historically inaccurate, and
because I think it counterproductive, given recent developments.

> >  This does not make sense to me. If {ce'u} is to be decided on by
> > community consensus
> Maybe it shouldn't be "decided", simply used.

I will go one further. I will (at some point this year) go through all
Lojban I have posted as 'texts', eliminate instances of {ka} with
what I now understand to be filled {ce'u}, post on my website the new
versions, and renounce my former usage. Because I will *not* have my
former usage
used as a datapoint in this. I fully accept I misunderstood what {ka} is
about (because we all did, and the invention of {ce'u} effectively
postdates my internalised usage), and I will not contribute to future such
misunderstandings.

Anything more I say will be even more inflammatory, so I will stop here.

-- 
==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==
Nick Nicholas, Breathing  {le'o ko na rivbi fi'inai palci je tolvri danlu}
nicholas@uci.edu                   -- Miguel Cervantes tr. Jorge LLambias