Subject: Re: Truth Value of UI (was: Re: UI for 'possible' (was: Re: [lojban] Bibletra...

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 18:14:17 EST

In a message dated 2/3/2002 12:04:54 PM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> People sometimes say "Oh, fuck!" and "Ouch!" as utterances in discussions
> to communicate their state of emotions. The fact that at other times, the
> ingrained communicative habit triggers an ejaculation outside of a
> discussion is caused by, and not parallel to, their original communicative
> function.
As one might expect in a desperate case, this so vague as to be useless and 
so irrelevant as to be misleading. "People sometimes use ... to communicate 
the state of their emotions" They sometimes use them and they often do 
communicate and they may even use them to communicate. But this only works 
because the expressions have developed for expressing these emotions. That 
is, the rest of this paragraph has the causal links backwards we don't use 
communication techniques expressively but expressive forms communicatively. 
(I can't prove this to xod, of course, since he can't see it and will take 
any evidence offered as proving the opposite, by twists of logic and 
vocabulary.) There are many expressive usages which are not used 
communicatively -- at least by some people. The expressive usage underlies 
the communicative, though neither is the cause of the other. The 
effectiveness of the expressive function makes the communicative possible. 

> 
> Are you going to try to convince me that there are words that were created
> and taught with the intent of private, internal use, and that are never
> intended for interpersonal communication? Once you manage to do that, and
> then prove that the Book teaches that UI are similarly not intended for
> interpersonal communication, then I will agree with you. Good luck.
> 

Aside from constructed languages, words aren't created and taught much at 
all, they evolve and are learned. And,yes, some words do evolve primarily for 
expressing "internal states" (though, as Mad Ludwig points out, these states 
are not really private and every word has to be learned in a social context). 
So, I learned to say "f**k" to express a particular kind of frustration from 
seeing others obviously in like states using the word to vent their feelings 
(I actually learned that I could replace the "drat" that had been so daring 
when I was a kid with something a bit more powerful -- though the power is 
virtually all gone now). It is not obvious to me that those from whom I 
learned it were trying to communicate with me -- in some cases I doubt that 
they were aware of my presence and, I fear, I passed the habit on to my child 
without ever meaning to communicate my frustration to her. Of course, saying 
this does convey some of tha frustration -- as does my twisted purple face, 
my jerky motions, my ragged breathing, and countless other signs that 
accompany (or constitute) that frustration. They occur -- as does saying 
"f**k" -- when there is no one around (at least that I am aware of), and I 
can use at least some of them -- "f**k" is particularly easy -- to tell 
others about a frustration now passed. That works because we all remember 
being in a "f**k"-saying mood and thus understand what I am talking about 
(even if we don't any longer remember the occasion where we learned the 
word.)

Of course, UI -- like every bit of langauge -- is intended for interpersonal 
communication. What follows from that? Zip. It does not, in particular, 
follow that on a given occasion it is intended to communicate anything to 
anybody. UI -- and language in general, is also intended to express 
feelings, to create art, to perform magic, and so on, even though on a given 
occasion most of these will not be going on.

<Only if you intend to derail this discussion with a bizarre definition of
"symbol" which, as previous distortions, judiciously sketches its
conceptual boundary to exclude my case. If you insist upon destroying the
useful meaning of the term "symbol" with such antics, I'll migrate to
another word, because I'm not really discussing word definitions but
rather the ideas and relationships behind them.

There are a sufficient number of people that will agree that an entity
with spoken and written incarnations and a socially agreed meaning is a
"symbol".>

When discussing linguistic questions, it seems appropriate to use linguistics 
as a source for developed observations and theories and thus for terminology. 
It does happen that "symbol" is a term that different schools have used in 
different ways, so it become important in a linguistics context (which xod 
haas apparently quite deliberately avoided ever getting into -- to the 
detriment of his arguments) to know which school is being used. Now that we 
know what his definition is, it is possible to proceed (I'm not sure that 
being a symbol requires a spoken incarnation, but for linguistic ones -- 
which is all we are about -- it does, so skip that problem.).

<Well, only a liar (or actor, etc) would say "mi gleki" if they weren't
actually le gleki.>
In isolation, true -- pretty much. We can come up with an open ended list of 
occasions for saying {mu gleki} when not happy. We can do the same for 
saying {ui}, of course, and many of the occasions will be the same. So?

<Of course, a speaker can dissemble
> and say "ui" when not actually happy, but likewise one can carefully
> carve a footprint in the ground using a spatula to falsely create
> the impression that someone has trodden there. A 'footprint' not made
> by treading is a fake footprint, and a "ui" said when not happy is
> a fake "ui".

Well, you've agreed that UI has a truth value. I wish I had read this part
first before I wasted time responding to the rest. I'm glad you've come
around!>

I don't see it. Nothing in the previous passage suggests that the presenter 
has admitted that {ui} has a truth value. The analogy suggest quite the 
opposite, that {ui} is like a natural sign, which can be faked.

<> > Is smoke? If
> > we're arranged that smoke has a certain meaning, and the signal is sent
> > but the condition to which it maps is not met, the smoke is a lie.
>
> Okay, but I deny that "ui" is a prearranged signal for me to use to
> communicate to you that I'm happy. Rather, "ui" is a conventional
> part of my behaviour; it's what I say when I'm happy.

Is it really? Did the idea come spontaneously forth from your childhood
habits? Or did you read about it in a book? Shall we now argue the
definition of "pre-arranged"? Selmaho UI was created, not discovered.>

Selma'o UI -- like all of Lojban -- was created. In this case it was created 
to provide normalized means of expressing certain things that were expressed 
in ordinary language. What these were is largely a matter of "discovery," 
though we have known about them since we were very young. What was 
dicovered, perhaps, was which ones needed to be represented in Lojban and 
which could be ignored or dealt with in some other way. I learned to use 
{ui} as the Lojban replacement for my English happy-words, just as I learned 
to use {klama} for much of my English "come" and "go," but the English 
happy-words, like the English content words, I learned and habituated from a 
variety of experiences, spontaneously in childhood.