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

From: Nick NICHOLAS <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 18:16:31 -0700 (PDT)

On Fri, 14 Sep 2001, Bob LeChevalier (lojbab) wrote:

> At 01:44 PM 9/14/01 -0700, Nick NICHOLAS wrote:
> >On Thu, 13 Sep 2001, Bob LeChevalier (lojbab) wrote:
> >[Flames and counterflames bypassed. I haven't changed my mind; but
> >whatever.]

> Flame? Moi?

Nope: moi. :-)

> >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".
> If the community is convinced that the ma'oste is wrong based on history,
> then the community should do no less than to come up with a better 100
> character definition %^)

Lojbab, please read the pertinent discussion on the List and the Wiki
before you say this kind of things. It has.

> >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.
> I just wish the split had gone the other way (it did, but no one uses it
> the other way) so that people would first come to the main forum and be
> attracted by what they read. But it didn't.

This split may yet happen. I think it will be overtaken by the planned
Great Infrastructures, though.

> That has been my opinion for several years. But this one I WILL blame on
> you. You've said that I should be monitoring the list discussions (and
> presenting examples to support my positions) and monitoring the wiki, and
> contributing to it. You've strongly implied that Lojban Central is
> derelict in not monitoring and actively participating in all of these
> discussions on all of the fora, and thus, I have been trying. Failing, but
> trying anyway.

This, I barely have an answer for. I still think dereliction is what's
happened, but events have overtaken this anyway. If you cannot succeed at
doing 10 things at once (and there's no way the 10 things will slow down;
if anything, they're going to ramp up), then do succeed at doing one
thing well. In line with your ideology about the language (because you do
have one, and you cannot be all things to all people), your purposes are
probably better served by reading Alice than the Wiki.

> >And after all, many of the debates arise precisely because someone tries
> >to say something somehow.
> That's fine. But they seem to lose that context very quickly, probably
> because people are seeking to make general rules having experienced a
> single incidence.

Which I continue to believe is perfectly legitimate, but our
understandings of what Lojban is about are now so antithetical, it's once
again pointless to debate this.

> > > 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.

> It is? Where is this definition? And why should it be so? Why can't they
> refer to any of the other sumti? I seriously do not understand why vo'a
> and vo'e have some sort of privileged role in the x3 of dicra which need
> not refer to x1 or x2 at all.

It should be obvious that, when a ka-clause is related to other sumti in a
gismu definition, (a) that ka-clause contains ce'u; (b) that gismu usually
specifies how that ce'u value is filled, through one of the other places.
When a gismu definition involves a property, it should be obvious that
it's a property of one or more of the other places. If it's not obvious to
you, then we clearly understand {ka} very very differently. But we already
knew that.

> >You can't just be elliptical

> Of course I can. This is Lojban; I can be elliptical about anything!
> %^) The rules need to be able to tolerate ellipsis, because human beings
> will ellipsize.

That is SO utterly cheap. You know what my full sentence means; you have
no right to truncate it to score a cheap shot.

*collects himself*

You cannot complain, I mean, that ce'u doesn't work when you're being
elliptical. If you're leaving out half the sentence, of course there's
going to be nowhere visible for ce'u to be anchored. That does not mean
there's nowhere for ce'u to be anchored at all, hence ce'u doesn't work,
hence not all ka-clauses involve ce'u. That's just plumb wrong.

> >and assume that means ce'u doesn't work.
> If I am forced to not be elliptical in order for you to figure out the
> grammar, then something is wrong.

Uhuh.

So what's the relation between {lamne} and {gerku} in {lange'u}?

I have every right in the world to say "when you use {lange'u}, you mean
{lantroge'u}." You can keep on using {lange'u} to your heart's content,
because you're indifferent to my hardliner concerns. But what I say is
true: what you mean is {lantroge'u}.

Ellipsis is ambiguous inherently, Lojbab. That's why we fill in ellipses
to disambiguate. That is what we say about Lojban, isn't it?

> But please translate me correctly, since it was carefully worded NOT to be
> a criticism of you.

(Alternative interpretation given.)

Thank you for proving my point on the danger of ellipsis. How was I
supposed to know what it was about the chaos of the list interfering with
you? How was the onus not yours to make this clear? Why isn't the x3 of
dicra the right place to make this disambiguation?

The correct x3 then becomes

leka ce'u rinka lenu ce'u dukse kalsa

I assume.

> I guess I am in favor of allowing absurdity.

I guess so.

> Or perhaps the kind of wooly thinking that Lojban is intended to make
> possible to express clearly.

Woolly... clearly... Oh God, you *have* discovered Doublethink! :-)

This is pointless; I'm not going to try everyone else's patience on the
list by going further. We are not going to agree on this, and I'm getting
to het up about it for anything constructive to emerge, anyway.

> She's halfway through the diagrammed summary at this moment. The key text
> that she takes issue with is not the examples at the end but YOUR
> translation of the introduction. She says that it did not parse - not lots
> of errors and you made "a noble try", but she doesn't think that you
> grammar-checked it.

Oh, *that*. Yeah, never got to. Sorry.

> Oh, and she wants to know why you are hung up on
> Jordanians (Jordanian-data-universe!!! %^) - but that was in the lesson
> intro Lojban translation, which she has also looked at). Have no fear;
> your Lojban is being extensively commented on.

Oh, I expect nothing less!

... and indeed, the rafsi for jorne is jon and not jor.

Proving what an utter misfeature rafsi are once again, but that's nothing
we didn't already know.

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