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

From: Rob Speer <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2001 22:44:12 -0400

On Sun, Oct 07, 2001 at 08:21:58PM -0400, [email-masked] wrote:
> 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. 

I may have misused the word "recursion", and your criticism of that would
be justified. But here I have to respond with: What *are* you talking
about?

How does "the first man on Mars" have anything to do with {nei}?

Why do you think {nei} can't refer to something later in the sentence?

And in your criticism of my saying "recursion" when I meant
"self-reference" you completely failed to get the point. {nei} does
refer to something of which {nei} is a part, and it has to.
Nevertheless, we understand what it means.

Another example: "I see a man who is talking to himself". Expand this
out and you get "I see a man who is talking to a man who is talking to
himself", and so on. How can you know who's being referred to without
knowing who he's talking to, and how can you know who he's talking to
without knowing who he is?

But we do know who he's talking to: himself.

You don't NEED to expand the referent of "himself". And the same holds
for {nei}.

> <> <* What follows le is a bridi by your definition, but it is not the 
> specific

I find your e-mail quoting style baffling.

> [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.]

What do you want me to do, grovel at your linguistic superiority while
allowing you to redefine {le mamta be ce'u} in a way which doesn't seem
to benefit the language at all?

> 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.

You must disagree in the crucial area, because {le broda be le brode} is
not a BRIDI. {broda be le brode} is {lo bridi}, yes, but the Lojban
definition of {bridi} is not related to the parser construct
"sentence_40" which for convenience we call a "bridi" and which here we
are calling a BRIDI.

So {lo bridi} could mean "a large pink elephant" and {ce'u} would still
relate to the BRIDI that contains it, not the large pink elephant that
contains it.

And the BRIDI that contains it is the actual one in the sentence, not
the imaginary one.

> Thanks for the support.

You can stop saying that now.

> Notice, by the way, that, according to you last time (and immediately below) 
> {poi} also creeates a separate BRIDI.

"Creates"? It doesn't create a BRIDI. The BRIDI is already there in the
sentence, since by its grammatical definition any NOI word is followed
by a BRIDI.

> 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).

Why would I be talking about {ko'a poi broda le brode}? I was talking
about sumti, not relative clauses, and I explicitly used the word
"sumti". Do you wish to quibble over the definition of "sumti" as well?

You make it sound like the fact that {broda le brode} in {ko'a poi broda
le brode} is a BRIDI is a conclusion that we took a long time to come
to, and which supports your point.

Of course it's a BRIDI. The parser could tell you that. This helps your
argument only as much as the fact that water is wet.

-- 
la rab.spir
noi sarji zo gumri