Subject: ce'u: the story so far

From: Nick NICHOLAS <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2001 15:52:27 -0700 (PDT)

So.

du'u:

by default, no ce'u; blank places are zo'e.

Bound ka --- by which I mean (linguistic jargon) ka subcategorised for by
the selbri, or (Lojban jargon) the ce'u is filled by another sumti of the
same selbri:

by default one ce'u, preferrably no more than two ce'u. Necessarily at
least one ce'u.
If there's no ce'u there, read one in (best guess: ke'a-style). If there
is one there, assume the other places are just zo'e.

This much is established and solid, I claim, through synergy of xorxes
and And (and an exemplary combination of usage and rigor --- which I'd
say combines hardlinerism and naturalism, but not everyone necessarily
will). Being settled, it can be incorporated in a lesson.

Now the outstanding stuff.

Lojbab wants (and explains remarkably poorly) a protaean ka.

This ka would not be a bound ka. It would be speaking of ka in the
abstract --- as in, I presume, {mi tavla le ka gerku} (tavla does not
expect leka any more than anything else as its x2.) I will thus call this
a free ka.

Initially, Lojbab wants it with no ce'u, because he's not interested in
any places.

When it's pointed out that ka needs to have ce'u by definition, or it's
not a property --- pc
reformulates it to: all places are ce'u (so no place is made more
interesting than any other.)

Other Lojbanists (Nick certainly, I *think* John, and xorxes) don't
understand at all why you'd want to do that.

And proposes treating bound and free ka the same --- making both all-ce'u.
This raises howls of protest by Nick, xorxes, and xod.

And says "well, then ka is always one-or-two-ce'u, and Lojbab's protean-ka
becomes si'o"

There is much rejoicing, because Nick and xorxes (and rob, right?) now
feel they *understand* si'o, and Free ka, and that they are the same
thing. (i.e., the point of Free ka = si'o is that, by default, you're
concentrating only on the essence of the *selbri*, and the actual values
of the places are immaterial. See my parable for irreverent illustration.)

PC does not understand si'o that way, and protests what he thinks is a
capricious toying with abstractions.

Nick at this point would like to invoke the {fa'a} principle. (This is one
for the wiki, but I won't post it there right now.) For those of you that
remember the issue, which also arose from the lessons:

* Robin.TR, Nick and xorxes independently assumed fa'a (as opposed to
mo'ifa'a) said what the directionality of the bridi event is

* Lojbab (after many abortive attempts at communication) said no, it's
position, like all the other FAhA

* At this point, Nick yields, compelled by the analogy with the other FAhA

* Someone (Jorge? Nick?) says "but how are we supposed to know what it
means?"

* Lojbab (and I'm sure he's regretting this now) says "Well, John and I
know what it means."

* xorxes calls him on this. "No. If you're the only people who know what
it means, and don't tell anyone else, then everyone else will work out on
their own what it means, and their usage is what will prevail."

Nick ardently wants {fa'a} to be about location, to maintain the cohesion
of FAhA. Likewise (being a hardliner) he'd rather a Dictionary
fascistically settle these things, whether by example phrase or logical
formula --- or preferably both.

But on {si'o}, he calls out pc: if pc is the only one who knows
what {si'o} is, then other Lojbanists are going to go ahead and construe
{si'o} how they want, and their usage will prevail. You now have two or
three Lojbanists who say "Aha! So *that*'s what {si'o} is about!" This
genie is unlikely to go back into the bottle.

Nick contends (and I think I'm echoing Adam here, but I'm not sure) that
free {ka} is bogus, and that Lojbab is confusing "property" (of specific
places) with "quality" (which concentrates only on the selbri, I claim).
Once {ce'u} was introduced into the picture, he
contends, {ka} is about properties, not qualities. Qualities are {du'u},
or {si'o}. Free {ka}, like bound {ka}, should by default be assumed to be
a property of just one thing.

If, as someone here constructively
suggested (maybe Lojbab, maybe Rob), you want to have a special
"metalinguistic mode of discourse", in which {ka} *become* by default
qualities (all-ce'u) rather than properties (one-ce'u) --- then go ahead.
That's the thing about pragmatic conventions: they're defeasible. But
since many other Lojbanists will see {ka} and think property rather than
quality, it's your responsibility to make the reader realise that, where
you're leaving {ka} places blank, assume they're *all* {ce'u} in this
text. (Or, put all the ce'u in, as others have suggested.)

Nick also sticks by his simplistic (but used in the Lessons) dichotomy:
{nu} is something that happens (or may happen) in the world; {du'u} is
something you hold in your head. (I don't give a damn whether the {du'u}
is truth-conditionally propositional or not. This may be an error of
mine.) To his simplistic way of thinking, if a {si'o} isn't something you
hold in your head, he doesn't know what is.

Nick also now thinks the battle over Free {ka} vs. {si'o} is not as
important as the battle he lost to Adam, when he (I) was trying to
conflate Free {ka} and Bound {ka} (by filling places.) I claim that we have
enough consensus about Bound {ka} --- the really important {ka}, the one the
gismu list *forces* you to use --- that he can write something
constructive in the lessons.

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