Subject: Re: [lojban] A revised ce'u proposal involving si'o (fwd)

From: Nick NICHOLAS <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 13:44:33 -0700 (PDT)

On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, Bob LeChevalier (lojbab) wrote:

[Flames and counterflames bypassed. I haven't changed my mind; but
whatever.]

> I put in soi for use in reflexives that seemed like they would be
> excessively verbose otherwise. If you make it work so that reflexives are
> handled, then soi works. I doubt that my particular way of envisioning it
> is that critical to the language (or for that matter my way of envisioning
> much of anything that people find.

The issue in soi vo'a is not soi, it's vo'a. See Wiki, "Why the Book is
Right and the ma'oste is Wrong" and "Prior usage and discussions of vo'a".

> >And who precisely do you think *is* being held back from writing Lojban
> >masterpieces by grammatical quibbling? Me? And? pc? xod? maikyl.?
> >xorxes?
> Everyone else who reads what the grandmasters of Lojban are writing about
> and think that they have to understand it in order to use Lojban. You've
> intimidated the beginners enough that they've split off a beginners list now.

I am annoyed at your saying so, especially because it is true. In case
anyone hasn't checked, btw, the Beginner's list is a great success.
(Unfortunately, just like the Wiki, issues still arise there that have to
get into main-list debate for resolution. This will remain an issue for a
long time, and the whys and wherefores have already been discussed.)

I've intimidated the beginners? Yes, and I'm sorry I have. This does not
mean the debates should not take place. It simply means the time had come
for a split into two fora, and once again, thank you, Jay, for doing it.

> Sometimes I'd love to be able to hang it all and go work on my
> long-postponed translation of parts of Burton's 1000 Nights and a
> Night. But I have too many other jobs to do, from the business of LLG, to
> the dictionary, to responding to queries, and enthusing about Lojban to the
> outside world, to trying to coordinate a network of volunteers that often
> defies coordination. I'd love to be able to read the Alice translation and
> all the rest of the Lojban that the community is writing.

You know what? Go ahead. These issues won't go away anyway, and until
there's an Elephant, anything we say here is written on the sand. By not
reading what little Lojban there is out there, you cannot make informed
decisions anyway, and the same goes for me and anyone else.

This does not mean it is illegitimate for me to object to {le la nolni'u
moi} in Alice, btw, for example. I forced xorxes to explain what he was
doing, I choose
not to do it and to dislike it, and we still worked out that it was kinda
sorta legit. That process was important. But seeing that construction as
used in Alice, as opposed to debated in the abstract, was also important.

And after all, many of the debates arise precisely because someone tries
to say something somehow.

> >The cmavo list and the gismu list don't say much of anything. Furthermore,
> >the cmavo list and the gismu list were written in ignorance of {ce'u};
> >*obviously* they don't speak of properties. The reference grammar steers
> >{ka} away from quality, and towards property, by implying that every {ka}
> >has a {ce'u}.
> Which is funny since ce'u wasn't introduced until the refgrammar was 95%
> done. And I read and reviewed the book and think I understood most of it,
> without understanding ce'u a bit (at the time).

*smile* Well, your words, not mine. If you didn't understand ce'u, you
didn't understand the ramifications of the Book's discussion. I think you
still don't, but this is a pointless argument to continue.

> >Btw, the notion that {ce'u} doesn't fit in {dicra} is, to put it mildly,
> >puzzling:
> >lenu mi tavla do cu dicra lenu do gunka kei leka ce'u xi pa toljundyri'a
> >do ce'u xi re
> >This is just a property with two slots, relating the interruptor and the
> >interruptee. This is no different to {simxu}.

By which I meant interrupting event and interrupted event. After all,
toljundyri'a is a kind of {rinka}, with the seljvajvo structure

x1 (event) causes x2 not to attend x3 (object/affair)

> I have no problem with the subscripts. I understood it fine. But if you
> had a few more sumti in the x1 and x2 of dicra, I am not sure I would have
> known. If it had been

> lenu mi tavla la djan cu dicra lenu do gunka tu'a le lojbo kei leka ce'u xi
> pa toljundyri'a do ce'u xi re

> I don't know that it is so clear which ce'u means what.

You're being disingenuous. ce'u xi pa is vo'a (lenu mi tavla la djan.),
ce'u xi re is vo'e (lenu do gunka tu'a le lojbo). That's definitional.
(And as it turns out, the subscripts were unnecessary.)

> And where are the ce'u in

> loi nu do'o mutce casnu va'o la jboliste cu dicra lenu mi gunka kei le ka
> vo'a rinka lo dukse kalsa

Good lord.

loi nu do'o mutce casnu va'o la jboliste cu dicra lenu mi gunka kei
le ka ce'u rinka lo dukse kalsa poi toljundyri'a fi ce'u

You can't just be elliptical and assume that means ce'u doesn't work.
Saying "You talk too much on the list interrupts me getting any work done
by causing too much chaos" is elliptical: you might as well say "by
causing the ISP to go down" or "by tilting the Earth's Axis towards
Orion." What precisely has talking on the list got to do with you getting
any work done? You answer that by filling in a sumti or bridi. When you do
that, you have the place to hang ce'u off. QED: "by causing too much
chaos, *which distracts me from* getting any work done."

I mean, we have the relation

X interrupts Y in that Z.

Whatever Z is, it involves X, obviously: X is the cause, Z the mechanism.
Whatever Z is, it also involves Y, obviously: if the mechanism of
interruption had absolutely nothing to do with Y, then why was Y
interrupted in the first place? And the slots for X and Y in Z are filled
with ce'u. To say
those slots are unfillable is to say that there is no causal connection
between X and Z, or Y and Z. Which is absurd.

Might the relation be complex to express? Sure, which is why you're
allowed to express Z elliptically, as you've just done.

But may I suggest that the kind of thinking that says that the {te dicra}
does not involve the {se dicra} through some bridi
is precisely the kind of woolly thinking Lojban is meant to help you
avoid?

(And none of the "Metaphysical Freedom" stuff, I prithee. If you wanted
"Metaphysical Freedom", you shouldn't have allowed the formerly raised
places in gismu to become unraised, either. This is the very same issue.)

(Rereading this, the argument isn't as iron-tight as I'd like. It may be
that the {te dicra} should only have one ce'u slot, vo'a, and that the
causality to vo'e shouldn't be part of the {te dicra}. Can't come up
with any examples; more like worrying about redundancy. But of course, if
that's the case, than expressing the {te dicra} with {ce'u} is even less
of a problem, since the {te dicra} trivially involves {vo'a} = {ce'u}.)

> If the above won't do, then I guess you don't get one (if this means I
> lose, then I guess I lose).

*smile*.

Go read Alice. When she's ten feet tall --- or not. :-)

Btw, I did grammar check the brochure texts, which is why they have
parses, after all; but things did creep in afterwards, as tsali's poem in
particular changed. (Much more than the others, since we discussed
for a while which changes would be
poetically most effective.) Do let me have these corrections soon.

-- 
== == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == ==
Nick Nicholas, Breathing I REJECT {gumri}
[email-masked] (Lojban Wiki, Resurrected Gismu)