Subject: Re: [lojban] Introduction, and zutse/se sutse

From: Invent Yourself <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2001 16:24:32 -0500 (EST)

I'm afraid what you deleted was the most important part. How can Lojban
words be defined more precisely than English words if we're going to use
English words to define them, and discuss their clarification in English?
And then you can argue that you can't get to Lojban except through
English, so we're stuck.

Lojban is not completely unambiguous like Fortran. It's just parseable.
Nothing anybody can ever do, in any language, will establish a definition
of "sit" or "chair", or "zutse" or "stizu" which lacks borderline cases
that a ballbuster like me can use to make people miserable.

On Mon, 12 Nov 2001 [email-masked] wrote:

> I wrote:
> > > I interpreted this to mean that all stizu's (chairs) are also (se zutse)'s
> > > (things sat upon). Not so sure I agreed with this, I asked whether stizu's
> > > were se zutse's even if nobody was sitting in them. "Sure they are," was
> > > the answer, with the subsequent discussion basically saying that stizu's are
> > > se zutse's because someone can sit in/on them. If this is really the case,
> > > I think something in my understanding of lojban needs to be adjusted.
>
> xod wrote:
> > OK, let's say the stizu is a chair which someone has sat in, and which was
> > designed for sitting.
>
> Then it is clearly a "pu se zutse", which is a type of "se zutse". But this
> wasn't exactly the question. The question was whether a chair is a se zutse
> in the absence of a present, past or future sitter.

Who can guarantee that nobody will ever sit in a chair? In order to do so,
you can construct a weird test case, but you will have drifted far from
the realm of real people and their chairs found in homes.

Let's look at zutse. X is surely a zutse2 if we agree that someone is
sitting on it. Is it still a selzutse if the person gets up? If not, then
what if people regularly sit on it, but nobody is sitting on it at the
present moment? Lojban Gismu is not a solution to such silly arguments, as
a quick perusal of the archives will show.

> > Let's see you define sit and chair.
>
> I think it's more productive to define zutse and stizu, which are:
>
> zutse - x1 sits [assumes sitting position] on surface x2
>
> stizu - x1 is a chair/stool/seat/bench, a piece or portion of a piece of
> furniture intended for sitting
>
> These were taken from the gismu list, which appears to be the most
> authoritative dictionary-like-thing I've found.
>
> > Specify whether
> > a cat box is a type of chair.
>
> Appears to be a stizu, yes.

Why? You haven't defined "sit" yet. The def. of stizu uses "sit". Is the
squatting of a cat a form of sitting? What about crouching? Bending over?
Stooping low? Touching ones toes?

> > How about a petri dish? (Are the bacteria
> > sitting? or standing up?)
>
> This depends on what "sitting" means in the gi'uste definition.

Well, stizu didn't refer to "zutse", it referred to "sit".

I think
> it's clear that whoever wrote the gi'uste intended for this to apply to
> people and animals we would normally think of as sitting. Therefore it
> would seem to apply to humans and cats, but not to bacteria.

And yet, that shouldn't prevent Lojbanists from commonly accepting that
bacteria zutse in the petri dish. It could be the most applicable gismu
available. We only have ~1350 gismu, English has two orders of magnitude
more words. On average, one gismu maps to 100 English words.

> Perhaps it's too early to be griping, but aren't the gismu supposed to be
> well-defined? It seems to me that for them to be well defined, we're either
> going to have to accept the "spirit" of the definitions in the gi'uste or
> some other source, or someone is going to have to write a full-up
> legalese-style definition of exactly what relationships each gismu can and
> can not signify..
>
> Having said that, I don't think the definitions of stizu and zutse are all
> that relevant to my question. Let me try to abstractify the question so
> that these definitions don't get in the way.
>
> Suppose that I create an item (goi ko'a), with the intention that in the
> future someone would use it in a way such that the statement "[zo'e] broda
> ko'a" would be true. Further suppose that from the time I create the item,
> until the end of time, that relationship never becomes true. Would it then
> be a true statement to say "ko'a se broda [zo'e]", based solely on my intent
> that the relationship be true? I don't think so, because:
>
> zo'e na broda ko'a .ijanai ko'a na se broda zo'e

Since you're extrapolating out to the end time of the universe, this has
little to do with everyday life. I suppose if the universe were about to
end and time had run its course, yes, our perspectives on history would be
different. As it stands, we can discuss the past and present with some
certainty, and the future with less.

stizu says "intended for sitting". If the intent of the builder was
sitting, then it's a stizu. As for other gismu, it would have to be a case
basis. Is "intended" in the definition?

>
> > You're welcome, although you probably have retracted the thanks by now!
>
> Actually, no, I'm still hoping you'll give me a useful answer. ;)

The useful answer is: a stizu is whatever the Lojban community says it is.
If you can use the word and be understood by all, it's valid. If you are
understood by none, it's invalid. Said more elegantly, lo nildrani cu du
le jei loi jboselta'a ca jimpe

> .ui co'o mi'e djan.

-- 
I hope they confuse the two and toss away the lit flare while holding
the lit dynamite stick as a statue of Liberty Torch. That would make my
day- for at least a 1/4 hour. -- Fernando