Re: [lojban] Gerunds, infinitives and other technicalities

[John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com>]

[sigh!]  "no concept is ontologically pure" seems to be a denial of classical 
realism, the view that ideas are eternal independently existing entities a la 
Plato, so I suppose you mean they are either ideas in individual heads or merely 
forms of words (mouth farts). None of which is a problem for Lojban.  I suspect 
that what you meant was that all words are ambiguous, which is also not a 
problem for Lojban, since it is an inherent part of every language.  It is also 
non-controversial and has no noticeable relation to what went before.  The 
alternate suggestion is that almost every event (achievements being a body of 
possible exceptions) can be broken down into further events and that the event 
types change at the different levels of analysis.  Also non-controversial and 
unrelated to what went before.  As for reading a book, I suppose that this is 
one possible analysis of one sense of reading a book, but it does not seem to be 
four different sense of "reading a book": the first would hardly count at all, 
the third and fourth go beyond reading into something different.  But maybe we 
can allow these to be cases of reading as well, the boundaries are pretty 
relative.  But what then is the point.  That we need four words?  I don't see 
why; at most we might want some adverb thrown in.  A perfect Lojbanist is 
presumably a totally literate nativve speaker and he would almost certainly not 
create four predicates for these four notion -- unless he was deep into reading 
theory and needed to create a jargon.  (Incidentally, he would create sumti, 
which are noun phrases, he would create predicates, if anything).  It is not at 
all clear in what sense there is a continuum here, certainly not one which 
encompasses the four stages suggested as arbitrary stops along the way -- what 
would the intermediate steps be, that we would care enough about to mention?  
Someone has already noted the price of precision, which no one is willing to 
pay.
The rest is argle-bargle.  Questions don't embody or contain or sum up (in any 
serious sense) quests.  I suppose the quest for the meaning of life could be 
summed up in the question "What is the meaning of life?" but that leaves out 
quite a bit -- the presuppositions, for one major thing.  What two predicates? 
sentences? would it be and why are they necessary and what is the problem with 
having two predicates hold of (or two sentences be about) the same thing, 
whatever it may be?
Suggestion: figure out what you really want to say, figure how to say it really 
clearly, figure out then whether it is worth saying, and then try again.
  





----- Original Message ----
From: Escape Landsome <escaaape@gmail.com>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thu, July 28, 2011 11:38:46 AM
Subject: Re: [lojban] Gerunds, infinitives and other technicalities

The point is no concept is ontologically pure (and this should be a
problem, even in Lojban).   Assume we are talking of "reading a book",
for instance.   Reading a book would be :
1°) the process of collect the information of adjacent letters and
words in lines of the pages of the book,
2°) the same process, but with the correlative cognitive process of
assigning a meaning (i.e. mental images) to what is pronounced
3°) the overall and more global process of entering deeply in the
author thought, in his world, and capture subtleties
4°) the same process acted on a whole life, so as to change one's
philosophy (as when you say "I am a Gospel reader")

There IS some connection between all four meanings, in the sense that
4°) needs 3°) which is necessary for 2°) to be carried, which in turn
is necessary for 1°)
Or, you could say, 1°) is a substratum of 2°), which is one of 3°),
which is one of 4°), and there is pragmatic elaboration from 1°) to
4°)

I guess that a PERFECT lojbanist would create four sumti for each meaning...

But the real problem is that these meanings lie in a CONTINUUM.   So,
in fact, one would ideally need an infinite number of sumti, if one
would render each meaning subtlety...

Here, I have a similar problem : what I speak about is a quest about
the meaning of life or the like (you got it), but it is ALSO a
specific question, the question that carries within itself this quest.
This notion is a lojbanic monster, because it should be two broda at
the same time, if we were to use existing broda

Thus, I guess the best thing to do is to create a neologism to
encapsulate the very special meaning of this (somewhat ?) "new"
notion...

Or, perhaps, you have a better idea ?   I'm ready for all suggestions

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