[lojban] Re: semantic primes

[John E Clifford <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

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

> On 3/24/06, John E Clifford
> <clifford-j@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> >  I think the proposal about "x loves y"
> > works pretty well.  If there is something
> > missing, it can be added in once it is
> > formulated.
> 
> It is interesting, for example, that it does
> not use
> the prime FEEL at all, which seems at least
> unexpected, because "X loves Y" doesn't seem
> all that different from "X feels love for Y".

I suspect that this points to at least two
concepts of "love."  The one given seem
appropriate for at least a large part of "Love
they neighbor,"  for example, which usually
explicitly divorced from feelings (or is
connected only by saying that feelings don't
matter here).  there is also the moon-calf kind
of love, "romatic love," say, that is all about
feeling and has few of the practical upshots
listed in the NSM paraphrase.  It is probably
also this latter that has the physiological
correlates (palpitations, sweats and the like)
that I noted as missing.

> > I wonder if you know much about systematic
> > semantic theory then.  It is based in almost
> > every case on Logic and the metatheory that
> goves
> > with it, one feature of which is exactly the
> > completeness of the metatheory (even when the
> > object theory is not).
> 
> Well, I don't know much about it, no.
> 
> I can see two basic approaches to "concepts":
> 
> (1) Concepts are atomic. They are either
> undefinable
> conceptual atoms, or conceptual molecules
> reducible
> to their component conceptual atoms. There
> might be
> a finite or an indefinite number of atoms.
> 
> (2) Conceptual space is a continuum, with no
> fixed
> strictly delimited concepts.
> 
> In the case of (1), which basically seems to be
> the
> NSM approach, words may correspond to one or
> several atomic or molecular concepts.
> 
> In the case of (2), words can't correspond to a
> concept,
> since there is no such thing, but only to a
> conceptual
> region. One could say that words rigidly
> delimit a
> region, or several regions, or one could say
> that words
> simply point to a region without giving
> boundaries to
> it, so that only context can determine how good
> a
> pointer a given word is for the conceptual
> extent
> intended.

I (and a goodly number of at least old-style
anthropological linguists  -- this is Hoijer's
spin on S-W) incline to the notion that the
concept potential is continuous but that each
language whacks it up into pretty discrete blocks
(maybe fuzzy, but still distinct).  So, it would
not seem odd that every language has primes in
the full sense.  the amazing claim of NSM is that
the primes are the same for all languages -- or,
in the weaker version, that there is a core of
primes that are the same even if each language
adds some peculiar to itself.  If even the latter
is true, it says something very interesting about
the genetic component (probably) in human
language.

> > > Is semantic theory is impossible without
> > > complete
> > > definitions? Why can't there be a semantic
> > > theory
> > > based on approximate, good enough for a
> > > purpose,
> > > definitions?
> >
> > As a practical matter, because such a theory
> is
> > devilishly hard to work with, if possible at
> all.
> 
> I have no problem at all with NSM as a useful
> practical tool. It is the claims about
> universality and
> so forth that make it sound quirky.

Well, from the philosophic point of view, the
success of the NSM program need not say anything
about the nature of language.  It may just be
that they have found a scheme (perhaps one among
many possible and equally successful) which can
in fact be used in this way.  That need not mean
that this schem is "really there," in all
languages independent of some observer imposing
it on the languages.  To be sure, NSM does the
right things to establish its really-there-ness,
but it always eventually comes down to the
investigator's interpretation of the phenomena:
that his expression is the realization in this
language of this prime from the list, for
example.  All of this in spite of what was siad
just above.
 
>   As I said, "the
> > opposite of good" is not an adjective, as
> "bad"
> > is in English.  I think this can be worked
> around
> > in various ways, but -- as noted -- there are
> > claimed to be other reasons for not taking
> > OPPOSITE as a prime.
> 
> Ok, but a claim that there are other reasons is
> not
> as convincing as the reasons themselves might
> eventually be.
 
I can't find a connected discussion of this, so I
don't know what the examples are.  I only know
that the use of OPPOSITE has been suggested
several times over the last 30-odd years and
always rejected.


I am not saying that OPPOSITE
> has to be a prime, all I'm saying is that it is
> odd
> that they wouldn't have it as a prime, given
> that
> it's so productive. (And also given that I
> can't
> imagine what it's paraphrase in terms of the
> given primes might be.)

Well, as for productive, notice that it is
virtually never used in English -- nor any other
natural language I know.  I turns up in
Espperanto as an active feature, in Lojban
sporadically, in aUI as a central productive
feature.  And, I assume in many other constructed
languages exactly because it is so economical
(halving one large section of the basic
vocabulary).  But -- I suppose its detractors
would say -- good and bad, etc. are experienced
differently, not as opposites but first in
different ways (indeed, it is hard to say what
"experiencing as opposites" would mean).   As for
defining "opposite," I can't come up with one
either, but I expect it will involve sentential
negation (only aUI that I know of doesn't
sentential negation as a primitive but rather
derives it from OPPOSITE) and possible some
notion of approximation.  I really wish there was
an NSM dictionary to check up on various concepts
-- and a hot line to ask about others.


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