Subject: Re: [lojban] observatives & a construal of lo'e & le'e

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2001 20:20:43 EST

In a message dated 10/30/2001 2:59:24 PM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> I meant "count as a macrosyntagm", a licit maximal syntactic unit. (But 
> actually that wouldn't work, because lojban syntactic units go up to 
> text level.)
> 

And it will conflict with what you mean by sentence elsewhere. We probably 
should avoid the word altogether.

<Right. A normal-zo'e x1 in main bridi cannot be elided. Where normal-zo'e
= zo'e with its normal meaning.>

Since the normal meaning of {zo'e} (if that locution has any sense at all) is 
"the obvious thing," the observative use seem perfectly normal. Context may 
force the "currently observed" meaning or some other, just as it always does.

<#{lo gerku} could mean "Lo! A dog", while {le gerku} could mean
#"Lo! The dog".>
#
#Well, it is not a sentence, and I suspect a bit of subconscious punning to 
#get to this reading (it was surely present when the idea was first presented 
#-- so far as I know -- in '76 or so).  

I don't understand the punning.>

Lo (gadri and voici)

<#Oddly, the object of observation is always {le} by definition, so the pun 
fails.

"lo! the dog" = "le gerku is here"
"lo! a dog" = "here, da gerku"

For the latter, the object of observation is not a dog but a soa of there 
being
a dog.>  
MMfpfhmpf! I'm sure you meant something by this but the combination of 
macreons and impossible translations and the word "soa" (in what language or 
short for what I cannot tell) lost the point completely.

<None of this is so obvious as to not need mentioning. Based on my time in
Lojbanistan I'd say that the main point of sumti-raising is to be briefer or
vaguer than would be the case if the full bridi were used in stead of the
raised sumti. 

This argument is a bit of waste of time, though. I think tu'a is more useful
if it blocks the usual quantification rules, so the only thing we disagree 
about
is whether this makes it exceptional.>  

Well, I'm glad we agree on how it works and whether it is good that it does.  
As to whether it is exceptional, that is going to depend on things we just 
don't agree on, like where there are bridi in sentences and what is in them 
and what the rules are about quantifiers in them (indeed, whether there are 
rules of this sort). However, a flip through some notes shows that the point 
about sumti with {tu'a} has been made repeatedly since the invention of 
{tu'a} (and before as part of the argument for it, once subject rasing was 
acknowledged) in threads with topics like "subject raising", "intensional 
contexts," "unicorn hunting," "I want a nail," and probably many others.

<I don't know if this is discussed in the Refgram. If there's no documentation
anywhere, then it's hard to settle this thing. I say what I say based on 
a decade of relatively attentive reading of this list, but even if in any
verifiable sense I am correct, the consensus I report is destroyed by
your dissent, and the new situation is that there is no consensus>

Since those topics tend to occur at least once a year, "relatively attentive" 
seems unsupported (the more so since you were often a participant in the 
discussions).

<I have done my best to explain. 

So you think prototype theory is bad statistics or worse Platonism: so be it,
but there are plenty of people who don't agree with you, or who nonetheless
find it valuable; they should not be denied their gadri.>

Others have done significantly better and you might have copied them or at 
least referenced them. Most of them actually do agree with me on the crucial 
point, that what separates the occasional good prototype theory from the 
dreck is having a clear sense of what the relation is between prototype and 
version, something you have singularly failed to provide. As for having 
their own gadri, they may well have their own predicates but it remains to be 
shown that there is any need for a special gadri for prototypes: why not just 
{lo prototype of}?

<#<I see
#touch and smell the pc prototype, so prototypes aren't inherently abstract
#(-- I understand Platonic categories to be inherently abstract).>
#
#Whoa!  You can (or could in certain situations) see, touch and smell ME,but 
#I am not a me prototype in any interesting sense.  

Yes, you are.>

Of what? Me? No, I am all of me, not a prototype or a version either. You 
can call worm theory prototype theory if you want, but calling a dog's taila 
leg doesn't make it a leg. They are structurally very different.

<#That works for an individual, but not for a natural kind (let 
#alone a {le} group). This is not coming across as an ontology now, so much 
as 
#a verbal formula that covers several ontologies that inherently have nothing 
#to do with one another.  That judgment may turn out to be wrong (see 
#Lesniewski's mereology), but it sure needs a lot of work to make it 
plausible.

I think you're setting unreasonably high philosophical standards here.>

My standard is about as low as possible and still be a standard. Tell me how 
prototype theory works to explain {lo'e gerku} in a way that gets it right 
and that does not depend upon alaready knowing everything needed about lo'e 
gerku. That is, show me that prototype theory provides an explanation, 
rather than an obfuscation.

<Is there a linguistic case for prototype-theoretic gadri? Yes.>
Where? Not in any of your remarks so far. And it certainly does not seem ot 
be {lo'e}
<Are their logical properties well-understood or well-defined? No.>
A large part of the reason for the negative answer above

< Is their conceptual essence adequately understood? Yes.> 
Again, aside from your assurance (poorly evidenced) that you understand it -- 
and a bunch of other anonymous folk do too -- no evidence has been presented, 
not even a coherent description (though several incompatible partial ones).

<#What is the relation between the prototype and the version by virtue of 
which 
#the version is a version of the prototype, rather than something else.

Ah. Resemblance, is the usual answer.>

Yes, it has been since Plato, and has been recognizably inadequate since 
then, too (even Flatsy his own self noticed it). Any two things resemble one 
another -- and are different from one another, what describes the relevant  
resemblance and dfifferences here?

<#<#and of course means that 
##the individual has properties that none of its versions has and 
#conversely).  
#
#I think this is held (by prototype theorists) to not be the case. I would 
#favour
#going along with that view in the interpretation of {lo'e broda}, and taking
#{lo'e/tu'o du'u ce'u broda} to be the Platonic essence.>
#
#Yes, but HOW would they do it?  

sorry -- do what?>
Explain the relation between prototype and version, such that the differences 
did not matter.

<let's assume you know the literature but
still think the theory's crap -- well, then, lots of people don't, and they 
have
language rights too!>
Well, I use what I need. Notice that set-of-answers question theory involves 
a nice chunk of prototypes essentially -- the answers which syntactically 
match the question and factually meet the preconditions: the versions are (as 
usual) all the semo-pragmatic contextuallly licit variants -- maybe including 
translations (let's leave them out).

<I am unsure whether "we can come of with an expression meaning "is a/the 
prototype of" to express this ontology". How do we avoid quantification and
treat a category as an individual? That's where, as I see it, the gadri is 
needed.
Someone prototype-theory-minded doesn't want to be faffing about choosing
among different quantifiers etc. when they want to refer to Lion.>

Maybe if I know what the capital letter and the odd syntax meant, I would be 
a bit better off. Can you explain that at least? The short answer in 
Lojban, as you know, is that you don't avoid quantifiers but treating a 
category as an individual is dirt simple (at least compared to treating an 
individual as an individual). Finding a gadri that really caught a real 
individual (assuming that there are some) seems much more pressing than the 
other problems. Sets seem to be the only idnividuals that are recotnized 
unequivocally in Lojban.

<This is fair enough: you wish for indicators of shifting realms and 
ontologies.
But the lojbanic way is to make such things optional.>

But then context has to decide. You keep moving in cases where context says 
we aren't shifting at all (and, indeed, where there is no context and hence 
no movement).
People do need to brush up on their Grice a bit in these discussions, rather 
than picking examples out of the blue and insisting that they show something 
"on certain construals". What do they mean in the context provided or in the 
normal context?