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

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2001 04:54:29 -0400

At 06:04 PM 8/31/01 +0100, And Rosta wrote:
>{le si'o ce'u broda kei be mi} = my notion of Broda

That might be your notion of "le broda", just as

{le si'o broda ce'u kei be mi}

might be your notion of "le se broda"

But let us turn to some abstractions that people often label as Ideas, like 
"Freedom" and "Peace". I can't figure out whether the ce'u goes in those 
or why you would want to use one. Yet I have to claim/concede that ce'uless

le si'o zifre kei be mi

is not the same as ce'uless

le ka zifre

because the latter does not have "mi" in the place structure, nor is either 
of these clearly the same as

le du'u zifre

though the latter two seem closer than the si'o is to either.

>However, I did say that when people think they want a ce'u in li'i,
>what they really want is not a ce'u but a variable bound to le se li'i.

I think there is something orthogonal to this involved which resembles the 
claim for the need of ce'u in ka. We may imagine that it is inherent to 
experiencing some event or situation that we in some way we are an observer 
or participant in that event. If we are a participant, then we belong in 
the place structure (using ce'u to beg the question as to whether it is 
needed - mi is easier to say if I am le se lifri, but a convoluted se lifri 
would be easier expressed with a single cmavo ko'a if it would be clear):

le li'i ce'u tirna do cu se lifri mi
is my experience of MY hearing you.

but there could also be
le li'i tirna do ga'a ce'u cu se lifri mi
which is my experience of you being heard (presumably by someone else)

We don't think about the possibility of
le li'i tirna do do'e ce'u cu se lifri mi

because frankly it isn't a very English thing to say or think about (and 
maybe not ka rarbau - and don't expect me to tell you where the ce'u goes 
in that ka, because I don't think there is one).

It happens that we've stuck in a BAI counterpart for li'i so that we can say

le li'i tirna do ri'i ce'u cu se lifri mi

but I think that begs the question even if it meets the condition of having 
a ce'u

and then there would be the experience of fulfilling the imperative "ko ko 
kurji" which would seem to have two ce'u. At which point the 
philosophically rambunctious asks why there might not be a ce'u in all 
places, or none of them. Just because we cannot conceive of
le li'i ce'u gerku ce'u cu se lifri mi doesn't mean that such nonsense 
would be nonsense to roda

I am not going to claim that se lifri and se li'i bridi necessarily are 
synonymous, so I prefer to use lifri to even contemplate the possible use 
of ce'u therein.

Hope this doesn't duplicate something in the umpteen messages I see already 
in reply to this.

Hmm. xod asks:
>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?

My answer is that I don't want to prescribe a threshold for lifri. I 
believe that this is something that MUST be decided by people speaking the 
language and using the word, as they attempt to describe and communicate 
their thoughts. The less that we can get away with prescribing about 
semantics, the more suitable Lojban will be for a Sapir-Whorf test, because 
the way of thinking in the language will (perhaps) be determined by the 
language, and not by academics arguing about the language in English. I 
understand the desire for logical precision, but that I think belongs to 
the understood logical apparatus of the language, and the truth is that we 
don't KNOW enough about semantics in human languages - if we did, then 
probably Sapir-Whorf would be moot.

>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.

Passive involvement in an event might involve no participation in the 
event, nor any awareness of the event at the time, in that one might 
recollect after the fact that one was NOT aware of the event. My daughter 
is talking about the homecoming dance at her school. I recall my 
experiences of homecoming in high school, in which I neither participated 
nor noticed observing. I know that there was a homecoming game and dance, 
but I perceived it as a senior thing, had no girlfriend, and graduated 
after my junior year. I was present during homecoming week each year, know 
that it was celebrated, recall nothing about the celebration except that it 
occurred and that I was at school. It isn't hard to say that I experienced 
homecoming in high school quite passively. It is hard to figure out any 
place wherein the ce'u must go.

>The gismu list says "x2 happens to x1".

That is ONE paraphrase of lifri, and it is not the first and only one. In 
particular this usage applies in English for passive involvement in x1. We 
would not say in English that the homecoming dance happened to my 
daughter. She experienced it is a rather more active way. I experienced 
my homecoming dance by not experiencing it at all, in the English 
sense. We would have trouble saying that the homecoming dance happened to 
me, or even that the homecoming dance happened observationally experienced 
by me (ga'a ce'u). But yet in English I can say that my experience of high 
school homecoming was that it was nothing special, and I think that use of 
"experience" applies and could also be expressed with lifri though one has 
to strain to find a ce'u other than ri'ice'u that applies.

> This suggests to me that x1 is
>integrally related to the event, not a peripheral bystander.

It is true that when one uses that English phrase, that it is usually the 
case that one is passively but integrally part of the event.

But it is also true that for many gismu that have multiple paraphrases, if 
one can use one of the forms to express an idea, it cannot always be 
transformed into the other paraphrase with identical meaning.

>I so cannot conceive of "experiencing" an event that I was not involved 
>in, that I
>have nothing more to argue.

But you DID experience your mother's pregnancy. It DID "happen to you" in 
the English sense. Your ability to remember is irrelevant (and whether you 
were aware is not especially knowable - it seems that late pregnancy 
fetusses have some sensory awareness - they respond to stimuli). It is not 
the case that if you develop amnesia and no longer remember your childhood, 
that you did not experience childhood.

It becomes more tricky to argue about whether you experienced
co'a ce'u tarbi

lojbab
--
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org