Re: [lojban] Re: [Llg-members] nu ningau so'u se jbovlaste / updating a few jbovlaste entries

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Feb 7, 2015 at 1:47 PM, And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com> wrote:

On 6 Feb 2015 21:10, "Jorge Llambías" <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 7:36 AM, And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> So although you're not sure what it is, you have an idea of what it is that is good enough for you to know what it isn't?
>
> Yes, but that's not saying much. I know it's not a dishwasher or a lawn mower for example.

Still, you also think you know it's not what I think it is, which I think requires a fuller degree of knowledge than knowing it's not a dishwasher does.

I suspect rather than think I know. I only know that I know nothing. It just seems extremely unlikely that a finite set of rules can be a complete description of what we call a natlang.

 

> I can accept that the game of chess is fully described by its rules. But even for an idiolect, it doesn't seem likely that a finite set of rules would describe it,

Do have a sense of where the problem lies?

We don't have an a priori definition of what English is, so any set of rules purporting to be it is subject to be bettered by a new set of rules, by the usual mechanisms of science.

 

You accept that some explications are better than others, but think no single explication can be solely right. So could you accept that a family of similar explications could be right?

What about Lojban? What's the relationship between it and an explication of it? Is it more like English or more like chess?

Lojban design is more like chess, but if and when it becomes an actual human language, it will (I think inevitably) stop being like chess and be more like English.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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