[lojban] Re: (no subject)

["Matt Arnold" <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

On 11/30/06, Arika Okrent <arika@okrent.com> wrote:
> Other gismu issues were whether cunso really captures  "arbitrary".  I was never happy
> with that choice.  It doesn't capture the idea of "chosen at someone's whim" (the
> argument structure includes x3 "with probability distribution") but it's good enough I
> guess.

You might want to use a tanru, {cuxna cunso}, "choice-type-of-random".
x1 chooses/selects x2 [choice] from set/sequence of alternatives x3
(complete set)

Or, {jdice cunso}, "decide-type-of-random".
x1 (person) decides/makes decision x2 (du'u) about matter x3 (event/state)

> This quote is about an early invented language by John Wilkins.  (I have translated it into
> his language as well) but I think it applies to lojban insofar as it aspires to be a 'culturally
> neutral' language.  lojban has to have a lexion that allows it to interface with the real
> world, which means it has to make some assumptions about the organization of the
> world.  This isn't necessarily a problem -- all languages do that -- but it calls the
> neutrality of lojban into question.  We touched on this a little in the discussion.  I don't
> think everyone agreed with me.

Examine your expectations for what "neutrality" means. What do you
think the language architects meant by "culturally neutral"? I believe
this selling point was specifically designed to remedy the famous
problem of Eurocentrism in Esperanto, not to remedy anthropomorphism.

Lojban was intended to be substantially no more English than Chinese,
no more Hindi than Spanish, no more Russian than Farsi. (Please read
those words as "x language with y vocabulary and z grammar" rather
than "population from x country with y cultural assumptions.") This,
like every other selling point of the language, is achieved within
reasonable limits. Lojban imperfectly achieves goals which few other
conlangs that get beyond the concept stage have the slightest interest
in attempting at all.

By specifying that the neutrality was cultural, the Lojban inventors
did not claim that the language made no philosophical assumptions.
Granted, their debates are on record frequently arguing for a language
feature on the grounds that it would not constrain the speaker to a
particular philosophical standpoint. But they probably knew better
than to think they could create a language that would not have
cultural elements of its own. Since language is a cultural artifact,
the only way to have that would be to have no language at all. As Nick
Nicholas said, culturally neutral in this sense "is culturally null".

By some understandings of "culturally neutral", predicate logic itself
is thought to be specifically anglo-american, and for that matter, so
is the notion that all cultures should be treated fairly. Nick
Nicholas and And Rosta have both argued along these lines. However,
the idea behind predicate logic grammar was to be utterly alien to
human nature. In this way, it could be argued that the means to be
neutral among a set of alternatives is to reject all of them, as
presumably a secular state is intended to settle the fights of
religion over how the nation is to be governed. It's like a parent
rendering a verdict that because the children were fighting over a
cookie, neither one can have it.

> Why was Logfest first advertised as jbonunsla, then jboselsla, and then back to
> jbonunsla?  What happened there?

I was trying to get to the bottom of what the community would prefer
to name the event, in Lojban. I kept changing how I publicized it,
because I just needed to get a judgement from the experts of the
community, and I am leaving off learning how to create properly-formed
lujvo of my own until I have a greater command of the vocabulary.

I was alerted to the fact that the original translation of "Lojban
Festival" into a Lojban lujvo, {jboselsla}, was not as well thought
out as it could have been. Without the affix {sel} (which causes the
taking of the x2 place), {sla} would have taken the x1 place by
default, and meant "the celebrator(s)". And yet it was eventually
realized that the x2 place of {salci} is "the event that is
celebrated". It was a reasonable misunderstanding.

{nun} is an affix for the abstractor cmavo {nu} which means "the event
of". If I understand correctly, abstraction affixes do not single out
one sumti place, but take all of them simultaneously, considered
together. For example, "the event of x1 celebrating x2 with activity
x3."

I kept prompting discussion on it, which usually went back and forth
between whether to say {jbotersla} ({tersla} being the x3 place, the
activity or practices of the celebration) or {jbonunsla}.

Of course, every discussion of vocabulary is just as much a discussion
about the reality of what the thing is, as a discussion about
language.

-Eppcott


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