Subject: RE: countability (was: RE: [lojban] a construal of lo'e & le'e

From: "And Rosta" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2001 03:54:22 -0000

pc:
> [email-masked] writes: 
> 
> You and pc are supporters of B. I think most other people take it for 
> granted that A is the case. I seem to recall Jorge being a proponent of A. 
> 
> I refuse to be pinned down on this one. I tend to use Lojban like 
> English and so get A's all over the place, but I recognize that 
> Lojban is not English and certainly some aspects of lojban make more 
> sense from B. Hating every minute the following, I have to agree 
> with Quine that what Lojban words really mean is not something that 
> can be spelled out except in Lojban. 
> May I add that I find it odd that And, a proponent of a new 
> (relatively in this discussion) metaphysics which is at least more 
> obviously compatible with B, should at this point be a strong backer of A. 

A makes better sense of prevailing praxis and by reducing the role of
glorking, makes it easier to reason explicitly about meanings. OTOH,
in my own loglang I prefer B, but, crucially, have a glork-free method
of doing cardinalities so that it is clear what criteria the countees
are being individuated by.

Oh, and everything nouny in the gihuste is glossed as a count expression. I 
know that that's not defining, but it's not surprising that people then
learn the nouny gismu as countables.

> <As for me, I think A better matches the way users see things, and it 
> probably makes life less complicated.> 
> Yes, for thoroughly SAE enculturated folks that we all are. 
> RElevance to what is going on in Lojban? 

At what point does prevailing usage become indicative of the nature of 
Lojban rather than indicative of our SAE enculturation? (A genuine 
question: I have no answer to offer.)

> <If we went with B, then in order to talk about two words without 
> relying on glorking, we'd have to use a lujvo, valsi zei selci, or 
> other equivalent complex expression.> 
> 
> This is not obvious; we just might have to recognize that others 
> would come up with a different "count" -- some people follow Mr. 
> Whatsis's moves better than others. 
> 
> <Possibly the best would be to have analogues of measurement selbri: 
> This kilos ten = this weighs 10 kilos 
> This words ten = this is ten words.> 
> 
> No, we don't have verbometers we can read a number off the scale of 
> or compute from other readings. 

Seems carmi lojbo to me....

> <But this debate only arises under story B> 
> Not obvious. I had assumed that the discussion about what was a 
> sentence in Lojban (carried on in English) was entirely within the A 
> framework, yet came up with a different number of sentences --and 
> different boundaries -- within the same text. 

...which I took to be a sign of the ambiguity and hence the inadequacy
of the term "sentence".

--And.