Subject: RE: [lojban] li'i (was: Another stab at a Record on ce'u

From: And Rosta <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2001 18:03:48 +0100

xod:
#> > In claiming {li'i klama} has a meaning which is not one of {li'i klamaFA
#> > ce'u}, you're claiming that "I experienced going (klama), but I wasn'tthe
#> > goer, nor the origin, nor the destination, the vehicle, or the route".
#> > What exactly are you experiencing then?
#>
#> Maybe I watched the going. Maybe I felt it. Maybe I felt its wake. Maybe
#> I experienced it be reading about plans for it. And so on and so on.
#
#In English we make a distinction between experiencing something and just
#hearing of it. Where do you want to set the threshold for lifri? So weak
#that it includes any imaginative inkling, any hazy notion, any awareness
#of a possibility?
#
#By your final paragraph I have experienced pregnancy hundreds of times.
#But in English I can never experience pregnancy. 

I disagree; I think that what you say is not true of English. I *can* talk about
my experience of pregnancy.

#In my sense of reasonable Lojban, {li'i pazvau FA ce'u kei be mi} only when 
#FA = fe; only as the fetus. And even there, since I have no memory of it, whether I really
#experienced it is a matter of debate! How can I have experienced something
#of which I had no awareness? "Experience" seems to require the necessary
#conditions of Participation and Awareness.

But the participation can be indirect and diffuse. 

The haziness that you complain about above results from not being explicit
about the nature of the participation. 

>The gismu list says "x2 happens to x1". This suggests to me that x1 is
>integrally related to the event, not a peripheral bystander. I so cannot
>conceive of "experiencing" an event that I was not involved in, that I
>have nothing more to argue.

You can experience things that haven't happened to you, and things
can happen to you without you experiencing them. So "experience"
and "happen to" are only partially overlapping concepts.

#All I can say at this point is that when I use li'i I will, in all cases I
#can presently conceive, always put a ce'u in, indicating the role li'i2
#played in the event.

... and while I will applaud your desire to eschew vagueness, I will
continue to condemn your method of eschewing it as logically
inappropriate....

---And.