Subject: lojbabbitry a (ce'u)

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 12:45:33 EDT

In a message dated 9/10/2001 6:25:29 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> A point I have been trying to stress whenever I say "let usage 
> decide". Usage will not have decided while there are still only a handful 
> of people competent enough at the easy stuff that they are willing to essay 
> using the more complex or abstract ones. And I daresay there are a lot of 
> people who might USE the language more if they could successfully pull 
> themselves away from the endless arguments ABOUT the language.
> 

<Membership in a selma'o may imply NOTHING about its semantics.  Membership 
in NU means only that it serves as the head of a phrase that includes a 
bridi and is terminated by a possibly elidable kei.>

Which gives some prima facie clues about its semantics, unless the included 
bridi is just window dressing (not a possibility I considered until the {me 
mi mo'e moi} fiasco).

<How about one where it stands by itself, developing its own meaning? A si'o 
abstraction "means" NOTHING other than that which fills the x1 of sidbo, a 
ka abstraction is an x2 of ckaji and a few other predicates, a ni 
abstraction is an x1 of klani, a sedu'u is an x2 of cusku.  Deciding what 
place structures applied to these abstractions did some constraining of the 
meanings, but relatively little.  Arguing whether a si'o is a kind of ka is 
a philosophical argument, of the sort that can never be settled, because it 
hinges on whether one is willing to consider an idea to be a characteristic 
of something (i.e., is the x1 of sidbo an x2 of ckaji?)  We are NOT going 
to agree, and the argument is therefore fruitless.>

Well, it is not obvious that we will never agree, since it is not obvious 
that the argument is philosophic rather than linguistic, in which practical 
features, for example, might play a role. More importantly, it is rarely the 
case that the conclusion is the only fruit of discussion -- a better 
understanding of what is involved in a particular abstraction or in 
abstractions generally may arise, as well as some infrmation about all those 
places that these abstractions fill and the selbri where they fill them.  
Seems at least as valuable as another dozen banal sentences in safe 
constructions.

<Saying more or less what I said.  Equating the places of two different 
predicates in some absolute manner serves as a metaphysical restriction on 
how we look at the universe.  Lojban tries to avoid such metaphysical 
constraints.  Semantic conventions are thus to some extent bad things if 
they are rationalized, because the rationalization will always be in view 
of some particular metaphysical outlook.>

The worst kind of pseudo-whorfian claptrap. The argument it claims to be in 
accord with was a refutation of the claim that {si'o} and {ka} were alike, in 
support of the claim that {si'o} and {nu} are alike, so not at all what 
Lojbab said in the first place and he said nothing like the gist of the 
argument in the second. That aside, some notion of how the semantics of 
various phrases works is not at all metaphysically constraining, since -- 
once we know how things goes -- we can account for them equally well in a 
variety of ways metaphysically. To be sure, a nice picture helps for a while 
in formulating a theory, but the picture is not the theory. And the theory 
is not metaphysical.

<Nora and I, with less than full reading of all these intertwining threads 
of abstractors seem to glorkjunkie that si'o is supposed to be the 
archetype that you are talking about above.  If this is the case then lo'e 
is a manifestation of that archetype (and not the archetype itself (which 
manifestation may or may not actually exist in the real world)).  We 
discuss ideas, and not manifestations of those ideas.

More specifically, while lo pavyseljirna may not exist, lo'e pavyseljirna 
is something that people draw pictures and write books about as if such 
things did exist, and those things are distinct from the ideas/ideals we 
have of them: the idea of a unicorn is not going to carry a fair maiden, 
the manifestation of that idea would do so.

Now it might still be the case that we should use something like lo'e tanxein
mi sisku lo'e tanxe, because we probably aren't seeking properties, but 
manifestations that have the property.   This is not quite what Jorge had 
in mind since it does not equate ka and lo'e, but it might clarify/correct 
what is intended when we talk about seeking a property (which if people 
recall was introduced to keep people from searching for noda when they were 
searching for lo pavyseljirna which does not exist).>

Thus avoiding all metaphysics! Ideas, ideals, archetypes, manifestations of 
archetypes, real things, properties... An ontology to make Plato weep -- and 
Aristotle too fror the opposite reason. I especially like being able to 
paint a picture of a manifestation of an archetype -- an presumably not 
ending with a blank canvas.  
Now, what does all this mean in terms of linguistic usage? Well, we do have 
the note that maybe we seek manifestations of archetypes rather than 
properties, i.e. lo'e broda rather than ka ce'u broda (we can at least keep 
up with the latest decision of usage). But of course we rarely do; any old 
unicorn will do, even if it far from a manifestation of the archetype 
(unless, of course, every unicorn is a manifestation of the archetype, in 
which case we are probably back at the problem that there are no unicorns, 
again)

<My own preferred but totally unofficial rule for zo'e
>is that it is a variable bound by an existential quantifier with
>maximally narrow scope, so zo'e are bound within the abstraction,
>and hence {ro ka broda cu pa mei}. However, if there is no specific
>rule for the binding/reference-fixing of zo'e (and if its reference
>can be fixed arbitrarily within the abstraction, i.e so that it can't
>be exported to prenex of main bridi), then {na ku ro ka broda cu pa
>mei}, because there'd be as many {ka broda} as there are construals of
>the zo'e within it. IMO that would be a Bad Thing, because all
>abstractions would become intolerably vague, except to glorkjunkies.

Nora opines that apparently then you may be stuck with the glorkjunkie 
version, because when we use ka anaphorically, we appear to get the result 
you dislike

Thus if we are discussing
lo ka ce'u lebna loi titla loi cifnu
we might later anaphorically refer to
le ka lebna
where we clearly may want the zo'es to be carried over indefinitely.

on the other hand it isn't always the case that we want the zo'es to carry 
over.>

Anaphora is different from scoping problems: we need only a reminder to 
recover the whole-- complete with it bound terms.

<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.>

Oh goody! We need another kind of idea, Idea. Actually, I think that this 
is correct, since the properties we have so far and the ideas, too, tend to 
be very extensional and we need the intensions as well -- at the risk of 
being accused of metaphysics rather than Logic at this point.