Subject: RE: [lojban] The Pleasures of goi (was: zipf computations & experimental cmavo

From: And Rosta <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2001 14:14:50 +0100

Lojbab:
#At 01:39 AM 9/30/01 +0100, And Rosta wrote:
#>The possibility of goi-less ko'a is involved in only one of three key
#>arguments for asymmetric goi. The other arguments are (i) that no'u
#>serves the function of woldemarian symmetric goi, and (ii) that ko'a
#>may already have a referent, which you want to assign to a cmene, and
#>this must be distinguishable from assigning the referent of a cmene
#>to a recycled ko'a.
#
#I think i) is dealt with by recognizing that using goi is a kind of 
#metalinguistic speech act. One is not merely casually noting what ko'a 
#means; one is actively defining it (implicit ca'e?) and more or less 
#insisting it be used with that definition; 

certainly I agree that goi *assigns* reference.

#ii) is not something we designed 
#ko'a to be used for, if I understand what you mean by it. If I wanted to 
#assign a cmene, I would not use goi, but rather ko'a noi se cmene [name] 
#(or ne me'e [name])

I think in this respect you're atypical of lojbanists. My sense is that there's
nothing unorthodoz about using goi to assign a reference to a name, e.g.
"le nanmu goi la djoblogz".

And whether or not I'm right about that, there is a distinction between 
*claiming* (i.e. truly or falsely), using noi and ne, that X is called Y, and
*assigning* referent X to name Y (i.e. performatively decreeing that
X is called Y)..

I would have thought that computer programmers would be familiar with 
this distinction (or are my memories of c. 1980 Basic *totally* obsolete?).

--And.