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

From: And Rosta <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2001 16:02:37 +0000

>>> <[email-masked]> 10/31/01 01:20am >>>
#<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.

But in this case we do not need to say that there is any observative
convention for elided x1 of main bridi. We can say simply that overt and
covert/elided zo'e mean "the obvious thing" -- and of course sometimes
(and perhaps the default in the absence of prior textual context) the
obvious thing will be something in the immediate environment of the
discourse.

#<#{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)

doh!

#<#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.

Sorry -- I was tired and being lazy. "soa" = state-of-affairs.

For my part, I don't know what a macreon is. I've checked oed online and
m-w.com & find nothing. And there were no macrons in my text, so the
obvious typo sheds no light. "Macaronics" might make some sense, but
that would require some seriously bad fingerwork on the keyboard...

#<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.

If you think that it was a settled point, pointers to the messages that settled
it would be helpful. But I think it's better to leave it till the Elephant,because
it's a big topic.

#<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 more faith in my attentiveness than in my memory. I usually have a
good grasp & memory of the very recent history of current discussions, but
am aware that this fades. I find it very hard to get useful results from searching the 
archives; for example, I tried searching on "tu'a" and "quantifier" and "scope"
but found nothing relevant. Google seems to do slightly better, but still turns up 
nothing relevant.

#<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.  

What's the point of me referencing a literature that you seem to be familiar
with? Anyway, off the top of my head I can't think of anything that has struck
me as a really good intro to prototype theory, the sort of intro that would
make sense to people imbued with logic and traditional categorization.

#As for having 
#their own gadri, they may well have their own predicates but it remains tobe 
#shown that there is any need for a special gadri for prototypes: why not just 
#{lo prototype of}?

{lo pa prototype of lo'i broda} or {lo pa prototype of tu'o du'u ce'u broda}, I
suppose. Well, the answer to "Why not just that" is the frequent one: because
it's too verbose. It gives {le} and {lei} an unfair advantage, and nobody's
going to bother saying {lo pa prototype of tu'o du'u ce'u broda}. Also, {lo'e}
and {le'e} are effectively spare, because they're poorly understood, little
used and in little demand, and I opine that my construal at one and the
same time is both pretty compatible with the official line and turns them into
gadri that would be very useful and often used (by those with a taste for
them).

#<#<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 tail a 
#leg doesn't make it a leg. They are structurally very different.

Then use a search-and-replace editor to change "leg" to "tail". Or make the
necessary mental adjustments. I don't know "worm theory" and indeed have
never heard of it. I simply assumed that you were talking about the construal
of individuals as strands of spacetime.

By my understanding of things, every individual has versions of it. Anything
that has versions is a prototype. Every prototype is an individual. So there is no 
distinction between an individual and a prototype or a prototype of an
individual. 

#<#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.

If this is the lowest possible standard, then you are setting too many standards.

I will restate the essence of my proposals:

1. In an ontology without categories that are distinct from individuals, lo'e/le'e
give you a way to refer to individuals that don't exist in the ontology expressed
by the other gadri.

2. In trying to grock the categoryless ontology, it's quite easy to see howthings 
we normally think of as individuals can be conceptualized as categories, and
then to reverse that perception, but its harder to see how things we normally
think of as categories can be conceptualized as individuals.

3. Nevertheless, that ontology has many adherents, and it's not hard to grasp
the essence of, even if it is hard to reason about. Furthermore, it is useful in
linguistic expression and, in other languages, used.

#<Is there a linguistic case for prototype-theoretic gadri? Yes.>
#Where? Not in any of your remarks so far. And it certainly does not seemot 
#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).

I don't see how I could reply to any of this except by repeating myself. Sowe
will have to leave it at you being unpersuaded.

#<#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?

Responding, rather than replying, I think part of the problem is that you are a
philosopher rather than a linguist. So our exchange can be caricatured as:

LINGUIST: X occurs in language and is useful in them. Therefore let us have
X in Lojban.
PHILOSOPHER: But X makes no sense. Therefore let us not have X in
Lojban.
LINGUIST: It makes enough sense for it to be useful in linguistic expression,
and therefore it merits a place in Lojban. The philosophical investigation of
it can follow.
PHILOSOPHER: Nothing so imperfectly (incoherently and incompletely)
understood merits a place in Lojban.

In fact, the actual debate is not about meriting a place in Lojban but
about meriting a place in Lojban as a *gadri*.

#<#<#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.

I still don't understand what exactly you're asking, but I think it is safeto say
that whatever the question, I could not supply any answer you would find 
satisfactory.

#<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.

What is the dirt simple method of treating a category as an individual?

You want me to explain what the capital letter and odd syntax mean. The
best I can do is give you an example and (in vain) hope you can accept 
that in principle it could be analogized from even if in practise that might 
be difficult in some cases. Take the predicate cuktrxamleta, "is a textual
version of the play Hamlet". Well then, lo'e cuktrxamleta refers to the
play Hamlet. It is synonymous with the English word _Hamlet_.

#<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?

I don't know which examples you mean. The "on certain construals" move is
a normal gambit among linguists; it is assumed in such cases that one's 
interlocutor will find it reasonably easy to cast around in their mind for a 
context that makes the construal plausible. If you cast around and can't
find such a context it is reasonable to ask for one.

--And.