Subject: Letteral, letter words and symbols.

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 3 Mar 2002 15:03:43 EST

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The character above is called "ampersand" or "and-sign." When we come across 
it in a text we read it "and." In some other context it might be read some 
other way, perhaps related to its function in that context or perhaps 
"ampersand" or "and sign."
As a character, ampersand has a variety of uses depending upon the symboling 
system involved -- it gets used -- for very different things -- in a number 
of programming languages and in lunch, and it is read appropriately in each 
case.

a

The character above is called (in spoken English) "ey." When read as a word, 
it is read as "uh" (sometimes "ah", sometimes even "ey," depending on a cloud 
of factors). When met as a character, it is read as "ey." Ey, as a 
character, is used in a number of system, but is always read (except when 
used as an article) "ey." What it is doing at a given point is left to 
context -- that it is not an article is usually quite clear (though tough 
cases could be fadged up). What it is doing otherwise may be more diifficult 
to work out -- or may be a snap. But in all these cases it is still "ey."

So, what is the situation in Lojban? The character just above the previous 
character is a letteral. The name of that character is, so it seems, a 
letteral word, in this case {abu}. When this character is written in some 
formulaic context is is read as {abu}. But this character cannot be written 
in a language context, for it is almost always going to lead to an ambiguity 
-- mistaken for the word {a} which has more liberty of occurrence than the 
article in English and can occur almost anywhere that abu as a character 
could. So, where the letteral cannot occur as a symbol (and maybe also 
because it would be read that way and Lojban wants written-spoken 
isomorphism), its name occurs instead, but with the same sort of uses 
(abbreviations, variables, ...) that the letteral would have had had it been 
used there in this way. The main one of these is for anaphora back to things 
whose description begins with that letteral (or is somehow obviously 
associated with it). This, of course, would introduce another ambiguity if 
{abu} really is the name of the letteral -- as it seems to be in spelling and 
in some rather indirect ways: {la'e lu abu li'u cu lerfu} The referent of 
{abu} is a letteral (17.10.6, said to be correct, but whether true or just 
grammatical is unclear). So, {abu blabi} might be about a particular 
occurrence of the letteral (on a neon sign, say) or it might be about Alice, 
or someone else recently referred to with an a-description.
So, since the pronominal use of letteral words is more common than letteral 
name use, this is kicked over into the mathematic equation side of things, 
even though it is basically not mathematical -- and will rarely be used in 
mathematical contexts even as a character name.
Coincidentally, then, Lojban has broken one of the ambiguities of English 
(though not quite completely, as spelling and the sentence above and 17.2.3 
show): that between name and character as read. It has not, apparently 
broken that between character as read and its function -- in fact, it has 
reenforced it by replacing the character, wherever it might be used in 
language, by its letteral word. {abu} is not the reading of an abbreviatory 
use of the character, it IS the abbreviatory use of the character. The 
ground is now set for confusing letteral and letteral words -- when talking 
about them, at least -- although Refgram does try to be careful about that 
and generally succeeds (the Lojban is better than the English). And the 
opportunity has been taken up.