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

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2001 15:26:42 EST

In a message dated 11/1/2001 6:57:51 AM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> It was there in my original message. I know you read it, because you replied 
> to it. In that message I laid out currently mooted construals, gave some 
> reasons for not accepting them, and proposed a fourth.
> 

You did indeed, and I took "construal" as interpretation ( which is, indeed, 
what you called the earlier cases you cited and which -- insofar as I 
understood them -- they clearly were), that is attempts to say what "typical" 
or "the typical" meant.

<I infer from this that you think of prototypes as blueprints. That is, the
thing that you describe as a "prototype" is something that could also
be described as a blueprint.>

I don't know on what basis you make that inference. Blueprints are, of 
course, prototypes within the range of the theory, but nothing about emes & 
allos, types & tokens, or work & particular copy relates clearly to 
blueprints -- several other prototype prototypes seem more obviously 
applicable.

<I'm getting this rare but pleasant warm feeling of having been understood
by you.... Particularly the last sentence.>

Gee, I wish I felt that I did understand you (not to take away a warm fuzzy), 
for I still don't know what kind of prototype theory you are after (except 
taht it is different from the one we already have -- quite unrecognized as 
such -- in Lojban).

<#5.  Does this mean that prototypes should replace typicals as the referents 
#of {lo'e} expressions?  Not obviously.  

I think this needs to be unpicked:

A. Do prototypes merit gadri?
B. Do typicals merit gadri?
C. What do lo'e/le'e mean?>

I think unpacking is a good idea. Somewhere before A and B, though we 
probably need to talk a bit about the role of gadri and what it takes to 
"merit" them. Still, assuming for now that this is some function of 
frequency or centrality or that it has metaphysical import (is an 
individual), let us slog on.

<Obviously I say Yes to A. As for B, I'm all in favour of being able to talk
about the average chicagoan and her 7.1 sexual partners, but before
accepting that there should be gadri for this purpose, I would like to
see how the distinction between what John called "typical properties
of broda" versus "properties of the typical broda" is expressed.>

Yes, you say yes to A; but how do you justify that "Yes"? As you know, I 
don't think there is much (if any -- this needs some tickling, since John 
managed to make a point with the distinction) difference between the two and 
recognize that not making an apparent reference to an individual might make 
the whole typical-talk clearer. On the other hand, as noted, the same might 
well be said for prototype-talk, at least in some contexts.

<Finally, as for C, I think it would be to the benefit of the language if
lo'e/le'e expressed prototypes (categorial individuals, myopic singulars),
but it's not something we can sensibly argue about, and experimental
cmavo loi'e and lei'e should keep happy whoever is on the losing end 
of any argument about C.>

And I, of course, see this as making not too good matters worse, since I take 
it as insisting on the odd individuals, who have yet to be explained (and so 
are capable of anything at all, ad hoc, to solve every problem whatsoever -- 
and thus solve nothing).

<Something that is ordinarily conceptualized as an individual and expressed 
as a sumti can be reconceptualized as a category and expressed as
a selbri by means of {me}. Now, how to we take something that is ordinarily
conceptualized as a category and expressed as a selbri and reconceptualize
it as an individual and express it as a sumti? The usual criterion for
deciding whether something is ordinarily conceptualized and expressed
as an individual or as a category is whether there is only one X or whether
there are many X. The reconceptualization then involves seeing only
one X instead of many (for lo'e), and seeking many X instead of just one
(for {me}).>

The obvious answer (assuming there is a point to the question) is to make an 
expressions that begins with {le}, {lo} or {la} and refers to what you have 
in mind, those are the usual marks of usual individuals. But as I note and 
you have gone to some length to note, these don't work very well for even 
ordinary individuals. The more abstract {loi} and {lo'i} seem to work 
better, at least sometimes getting uniqueness, though not obviously the right 
sort of thing. Maybe this is another job for {tu'o}.  

How did prototype chat move from {loi}, where it lived for a couple decades, 
to {lo'e}?

All of this chat, of course, depends upon a certain reading of Lojban -- an 
English reading and thus a largely Neo-Platonic reading (more or less taking 
Plato and Aristotle to be saying basically the same thing, from different 
points of view). Is this reading fair to Lojban (accurate for Lojban)? We 
are constatnly noticing things that are perfectly natural in English but that 
don't work in Lojban: singular/plural and count/mass are currently running 
around this thread. Lojban has a different grammar from English so we 
should expect it to have a different metaphysics (if we are Whorfians) or 
Lojban is metaphysically neutral so it should be equally accepting of all 
metaphysics (within some reason? -- if we are Brownians). Maybe Lojban 
already is prototype based: this would account for some oddities (from the 
English point of view). In that case {ti gerku} just means "Mr. Dog (at the 
highest level -- Just Dog Its Own Self) versions there" and {levi gerku cu 
bunre} (the exact function of {cu} is somehat obscured here) means "Mr. Dog 
overlaps Mr. Brown there" Note that singular/plural IS irrelevant and so is 
count/mass (may consequentially).
It turns out that most familiar metaphysics are prototype theories and so, 
given one reading of a language, we can convert it into any of the others in 
fairly uniform ways. The trick is trying to talk about two theories at once, 
because the fundamentlas of one theory do not -- of course -- fit naturally 
into the other. On the other hand, anything that can be done in one theory 
can be done in the other -- and at about the same level of difficulty (or 
ease). As Harry Hoijer used to say when Whorfianism go to rife in his class 
on it, "Any way you slice it, it's still baloney."  
Now, what is it that Mr Prototype theory is supposed to do and how is it 
supposed to do it? Great, now we can translate that into item&property and 
that into Lojban as we understand it and, poof!, we have what we need. (Or 
we can do Mr. Prototype Lojban and get there directly).