Subject: Re: [lojban] je (was: crdlus. critique)

From: Invent Yourself <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2002 03:04:18 -0500 (EST)

A difference is only a difference if it makes a difference.

On Fri, 4 Jan 2002, Rob Speer wrote:

> There really is only one meaning, in most contexts, for {mi skami
> sazri}. It doesn't make sense to operate an abstraction, and I am
> probably not a computer that uses a tool. Yet people do say things like
> {mi sazri le skami} even with one "extra" syllable.

That doesn't make it "right". It's labored, it's prolix, and it probably
means they are translating from "I operate a computer" instead of "I'm a
computer operator". Sometimes I wonder to what an extent Lojban is
anything but a substitution-cipher for English; I think later generations
will bark at our struggles with makau as being the worst form of
English/Natlang import.

I agree with your objectives here.

> You can let context take the place of clarity, saving a few syllables
> along the way, very easily in Lojban. Michael Helsem's tanru are proof
> of that. So why don't we all speak Lojban like him?

Perhaps the issue resolves to this: In some alien context that I can only
imagine with great effort, where there are things that can da xunre do'e
le bliku but others that can de bliku xunre, and still others that can di
bliku le pu'u xunre, then some differentiation is meaningful. But in the
context of the specific interchange being considered, xunre bliku = bliku
xunre = bliku je xunre = xunre je bliku. The "world" contains nothing but
shapes of different colors.

And one thing about Helsem: nobody can accuse him of malglico.

-- 
The tao that can be tar(1)ed
is not the entire Tao.
The path that can be specified
is not the Full Path.