Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: noxemol ce'u

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2001 20:21:58 EDT

In a message dated 10/7/2001 4:24:46 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> On Sun, Oct 07, 2001 at 03:47:16PM -0400, [email-masked] wrote:
> > The basic problem with {nei} is that it is self-referential, so that it 
> > cannot ever succeed in actually refrring to its referent because it 
> referent 
> > does not exist until it has succeeded in referring to it. Thus, it is 
> the 
> > whole expression {le nei} that functions as a unit, with the {nei} part 
> there 
> > just as a dummy, not a real referrer at all (but enough of a reality that 
> it 
> > cannot be used for the first argument in the BRIDI). With counting {le} 
> > phrases as bridi in the meaning of the definition, {nei}'s work could be 
> done 
> > by {no'a} with a slightly less horrific result (though actually the same 
> > problem can be recreated at every level, including {vo'a} -- this 
> aprticular 
> > anaphora technique is theoretically deeply flawed, for all that it works 
> more 
> > or less in practice).  
> 
> Oh. That. The problem is that some people refuse to understand recursion.
> 
> The phrase "something such that it sees itself" in English has the same
> "problem": "itself" refers to what it is, but how do you know what it is 
> until
> you know what sees itself? Humans can make the tremendous mental leap to get
> over recursion, however. Note the sarcasm on "tremendous mental leap", 
> because
> figuring out the meaning of {da viska lenei} is only as difficult as 
> figuring
> out what x is in (x = 2x - 3).
> 
> In (x = 2x - 3), a stupid computer program might decide it can solve itby
> substitution:
> x = 2(2(2(2(2(2(2(...) - 3) - 3) - 3) - 3) - 3) - 3) - 3
> 
> Whereas a better computer program or a human with any understanding of 
> algebra
> would know to consider both the "x"'s simultaneously and combine them onto 
> the
> left side.
> 
> When you say "does not exist until...", you imply that the sentence is 
> parsed
> in some temporal order. This might be the case if a very basic computer 
> program
> is doing it. However, both mathematics and human thought involve resolving
> recursion. You can't resolve one part of the sentence before the other, but 
> you
> can resolve both simultaneously.
> 

Gee, after thirty odd years of teaching Goedel theory, I thought I had a 
grasp on recursion. Apparently I was wrong, because it has something to do 
with reflexive relations and two terms meaning the same thing and one term 
meaning something that only has meaning after the term has a meaning and God 
knows what all else.
What *are* you talking about?  
Lojban IS parsed left to right and has to be resolved grammatically in that 
way. Happily, the issue here is semantic/pragmatic -- about the referent of 
{nei}. {nei} stands in place for a BRIDI of which the expression containing 
{nei} is a part. Assuming that the meaning of a phrase is a compound of the 
meanings of its components, the meaning of the BRIDI containing {nei} is 
composed in part of the meaning of {nei}, which of course, just is the 
meaning of the expression in which the {nei} occurs. So, in order to get the 
meaning of {nei} you have to already have the meaning of {nei}. thus you can 
never get the meaning of {nei} and so not of the whole BRIDI in which it 
occurs and so not of the passage in which they occur and so on.
This line of argument is, of course, abysmal sophistry. {nei} has no meaning 
outside of {le nei}, {le se nei} and the like and it refers not to meanings 
but to forms. To be sure, using {le se nei} or {le te nei} in the second 
place creates problems somewhat like "the first man on Mars" does now -- or 
maybe a bit worse, but no one --except the metaLojbanists, naturally -- is 
going to do that; it ruins communication.  

<> <* What follows le is a bridi by your definition, but it is not the 
specific
> ? entry in the parser that we usually refer to when we say "bridi". For
> ? example, you can't put {mi klama le zarci} in {le}. {le} creates a bridi 
out
> ? of the pseudo-bridi which follows it, and takes the x1 out of it. This 
bridi
> ? is not part of the sentence>
> 
> Yes, it is not a BRIDI because it contains {be} and the rest -- not because 
> it doesn't have an x1.  {le} doesn't make it a BRIDI out of the bridi tail 
> that follows it nor does it take a BRIDI and make something else out of it 
by 
> dropping x1 and replacing it with {le} (although that is closer).  The 
result 
> of putting {le} in front of a bridi tail IS a part of thes entence -- where 
> else would it be?  I think I am missing your point here.  Whose "bridi" are 
> you talking about, not mine and not what I understood your to be.

Let me try this again with a specific example:
{mi viska lo broda be le brode}. (lo is easier to work with than le.)
The pseudo-bridi is {broda be le brode} (where did I say anything about not
having an x1 making it not a BRIDI? It's not a BRIDI because it's not parsed 
as
one.)
{le} makes this into an actual bridi: {ko'a broda le brode}. {ko'a broda le
brode} never becomes part of the sentence. It's a bit abstract, but if you
can't understand this concept we're at an impasse.
The imaginary {ko'a} does become part of the sentence, as the referent of {lo
broda be le brode}.

The result is that the sentence is {mi viska ko'a}, with that ko'a not really
there, but referring to the same thing as {ko'a broda le brode}.

I could do this without constructing a separate bridi, using poi and voi, but 
I
assume that's what And is doing which you object to.>

Nice, albeit incomplete, transformational grammar explanation of {lo broda be 
le broda}. So, in fact you were not talking about either bridi or BRIDI but 
something that has no reality at all in Lojban grammar. A word of warning 
would have been nice: "makes this into" and the like lead me to look for 
these things which, as it turns out, are nowhere at all, but merely 
theoretical figments of some grammarian's imagination -- albeit handy ones 
for many purposes. [Since I could read Logic and knew Adjukewicz arithmetic, 
I did much of the teaching at the first seminars on linguistic theory at 
UCLA, until they bought a pro.] Of course, I know how all this goes -- it was 
what I meant by reminding And that {le broda be le brode} is a bridi (indeed 
a BRIDI). I am still a little puzzled by how an imaginary {ko'a} becomes a 
part of a real sentence,or is the reference, in either sense, of anything.  
But, at least I see what you were trying to say, and I agree with it 
wholeheartedly. Thanks for the support.
Notice, by the way, that, according to you last time (and immediately below) 
{poi} also creeates a separate BRIDI. I don't object to And doing this 
(indeed, I want to insist on); I just object to his tarting this trivial 
maneuver up as some marvelous thing that somehow proves that {le mamta be 
ce'u} is unacceptable. Since it is merely definitional, I don't see that it 
proves anyhting -- except that {ce'u} is not a sumti in the construction, 
which we all knew all along, or should ahve.

<Notice that what ahppens in And's rule -- one version 
> anyhow -- is that he makes the containing "sumti" disappear  but exactly 
> replaces it with a new sumti which contains  a BRIDI and the same internal 
> sumti and such that the whole means the same (officially) -- and this 
somehow 
> is to prove that the internal sumti, which now is clearly at a different 
> level from the sumti it is contained in was previously at the same level as 
> the sumti it was contained in.  I just don't see how it follows, but inany 
> case the transformation that is done is trivial and has no bearing on the 
> issue at hand.

The conversation between you and And soared to great levels of abstraction. 
You
two couldn't understand each other, so I rather doubt I could.

If that is in fact what And meant, it's nonsense. A sumti does not contain a
BRIDI. It might contain words which would be a BRIDI if they weren't in a
sumti, but since they are in a sumti, they aren't a BRIDI.>

I make no guarantees about what And means or what he will say he means next.  
But so far as I can see, your comments are either not relevant to And's point 
(if you are talking about {le broda be le brode} where he also insists there 
is no BRIDI) or contradict yourself (if about {ko'a poi broda le brode} 
which And insists does contain a BRIDI and which you, too, seem to have said 
contains one -- and, indeed, I insist it contains one).