Subject: Re: remoi malglico (was: A revised ce'u proposal involving si'o

From: Nick NICHOLAS <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 17:17:18 -0700 (PDT)

cu'u la xod.

>I want to argue against And's proposal too, but my arguments are based on
>the differences between "relationship" or "quality", and "idea". They are
>not based on any differences between "ckaji le ka ce'u broda ce'u" and
>"sidbo". Here again, are we letting English concepts poison our
>understanding of similar-but-different gismu?

xod, the metalanguage of Lojban is still English. Inasmuch as {si'o} has a
definition at all, that definition is "idea/concept". We can guess at what
an 'idea' or a 'concept' are in English; how the hell are we supposed to
guess what a {si'o} is in Lojban? Is it a {sidbo}? But then, what's a
{sidbo}? Is it an idea, or a concept? Or both, or neither? What is an
idea, anyway? How do you get away from English there? By prototype? By
formalism? Who will tell us? Will it be you? Will it be me?

malglico is a good thing to be on the alert against. malglico purely for
malglico's sake is not. You're asking for a bootstrapping that I think
impossible. We can't agree what a 'concept' is in English, and saying it's
actually a {sidbo} in Lojban solves this? With the defined place structure
"x1 (idea abstract) is an idea/concept/thought about x2 (object/abstract)
by thinker x3"? Which disambiguates what exactly?

No; we have to keep talking about this in English.
At least with formalistic approaches, you're not expressly copying
English. Talking about {si'o} with a bunch of lambdas is not inherently
malglico; I would have thought it's a good thing. In fact, it was the
*only* way I could understand what Lojbab means by his protean {ka}: by
not concentrating on any of the places, he's concentrating on the
{selbri}. (Wish he'd said that earlier, of course.)

Talking about {ce'u} (and lambdas) was formalistic, and my impression
was, this is how we've worked out what {du'u} and {ka} are --- not, in
the first instance, by talking about English "properties" and
"propositions". I think
it absolutely legitimate to expand this to {si'o}; and I now think And's
proposal makes me understand {si'o} more, not less.

I'm rapidly tiring of these running street-battles, btw. If it does come
down to who yells the longest, it won't be me...

On a sidenote: .i doi xod do se cnemu fi lenu mrilu le 10000mei be le'i
notci pe le la .iaxus. jbomriste

-- 
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Nick Nicholas, Breathing {le'o ko na rivbi fi'inai palci je tolvri danlu}
[email-masked] -- Miguel Cervantes tr. Jorge LLambias