Re: [lojban] Mini-rant: mutce and traji must die.

Back in the day, most basic adjectives were inherently comparative: {blanu} was officially "x1 is bluer than x2" (with maybe a few more places -- this is a Loglan word here, btw). This always raised the question, when you wanted to use the merely attributive sense, "What is it bluer than when it is simply blue" and the answer always was (though no one ever seemed to like) "the standard/average/typical/.... one of what ever x1 is relevantly at the moment", roughly "blue for a ...". I was usually elided in the "you know what I mean" way, though the opponents always treated it as a "something" elision. (Using basic comparatives makes a couple of moves in semantics a lot easier, which is why it was used. I miss it)

From: .arpis. <rpglover64+jbobau@gmail.com>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Fri, December 16, 2011 2:36:13 PM
Subject: Re: [lojban] Mini-rant: mutce and traji must die.

One of the things I really like about lojban (in the abstract, not necessarily in practice) is that selbri have places which make explicit certain things which are completely implicit in other languages; one example: {rajycla} has a "by standard" place (inherited from {clani}), which makes it clear that the "standard of tallness" matters in any discussion of height, and requires a different selbri ({rajycla be zi'o}) to ignore it.

It seems to me that spoken lojban will (almost) never use more than three places, common written lojban will behave similarly, and technical or pedantic lojban will have some words (depending on context) which use more places.

{.ua ro di'u na'e se ganzu}

On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 3:18 PM, Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org> wrote:

On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 02:12:43PM -0600, vitci'i wrote:
> On 12/16/2011 01:31 PM, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> > These places must die!
>
> I'm kind of curious to see how far this can be taken. What would
> happen if, even in gismu, we forbade any place that can be
> replaced by a modal?

Can those places be replaced by a modal? Which one?

I have, fwiw, considered that posibility in my head as well. I
think that's too much of some-other-language-that-isn't-Lojban.

> Consider {cusku}.
>
> x1 (agent) expresses/says x2 (sedu'u/text/lu'e concept) for
> audience x3 via expressive medium x4.
>
> cusku1 is covered by {gau}, and cusku3 is covered by {ri'i}.
> cusku4 is covered by {xebe'i}. Though I'm stretching a bit, cusku2
> could be covered by {fi'o jufra}, leaving us with a zero-place
> gismu.

*snrk*

> I am vaguely imagining a language centered around modals rather
> than predicates, with selbri being created implicitly and nonce by
> the lists of their places. I'm not sure that this is different
> from all gismu having exactly one place.

Yeah, as I say, I've pondered that as well as a thought experiment,
but it's a different language. Probably a much more verbose one.

-Robin

--
http://singinst.org/ : Our last, best hope for a fantastic future.
Lojban (http://www.lojban.org/): The language in which "this parrot
is dead" is "ti poi spitaki cu morsi", but "this sentence is false"
is "na nei". My personal page: http://www.digitalkingdom.org/rlp/

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