Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: I like chocolate

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2002 13:49:27 EDT

In a message dated 9/14/2002 5:49:53 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

<<
> > If "tu'o du'u ce'u da cinfo" is the way to refer to the Lion
> > intension
> <snip>
> Some place back in that chocolate pile are some arguments against 
> {tu'o} here (or anywhere), but I can't drag them out just now. 

I remember seeing some arguments flit by without my having time
to register or digest them. If you can recover them, that would
be good. 
The good ones are about -- I find actually looking rather than relying on 
"memory" -- indirect questions and, more recently, about types and tokens, so 
only about special cases of abstract predicate, like {du'u ...} I suppose 
the shortest on is still -- {le}, {lo} and {pa} are all a little shorter and 
infinitely clearer than {tu'o} and are give the right results -- why make 
life difficult?

<<
> In 
> any case, I think it is finally clear that xorxes' {lo'e ...} is 
> different from {le/lo/tu'o/no'o du'u ce'u ...} -- and rather more complex.

I'm not saying I think the two are equivalent. I'm asking how {lo'e
broda cu brode} might be paraphrased using {du'u ce'u} and not
using {lo'e}.
Yes, and I agree with you (assuming that I have a handle on the genral 
purpose of xorxes {lo'e}) xorxes tends to bristle at any mention of 
expressons referring to brodahood in the same sentence with discussion of his 
{lo'e}.

<<
> Is {ce'u da} two terms (as CLL appears to have it) or "lambda x" as 
> good ogic would use it? I root for the latter but despair of 
> achieving anything with {du'u/ka} anymore.

It's two terms, as per standard Lojban.
Pity.

<<
> But I would rather abolish lo'e/le'e. Any cmavo about whose 
> meaning there is virtually nil consensus, even after years
> upon years of discussion, should be binned
> >>
> I think we need more of them, since what can be said with them takes 
> for ever without them. As for nil consensus, some parts of the 
> language are just ahrder to master than others -- even for the people 
> who invented them (encouraging sign of the language's autonomy).

Even I who purport to be a platonist find this a bit hard to swallow.
-- The idea that these cmavo have autonomous meanings waiting to be 
discovered.
Well, a tad dramatic, perhaps. All I meant was that, having laid out a basic 
notion of what they wanted, the creators can still be surprised by what theat 
basic notion turns out to entail -- or, as in this case, what is required to 
make that basic notion actually work in practice. These surprises have been 
a regular feature of this list since befoe it existed.

<<
I'm all in favour of adding new meanings, new cmavo, etc. to the 
language, or of deciding what existing cmavo should mean. What
I meant to say is that in a situation where we feel a need for
a cmavo to express meaning X, and there is in the ma'oste
a cmavo-form Y with no agreed meaning, the attempt to ascribe meaning
X to Y has to overcome the objections of people who think Y has
or should have some other meaning, and this is a waste of effort
when the only outcome that matters is that there be some cmavo
that means X.
While I think that, barring exceptional evidence -- which I sure don't see 
here -- it is a mistake to add new words until we are sure that what we want 
is not already covered. 
Or, as in this case, I think, that the new notion is useless and better dealt 
with elsewhere (probably in both partially in standard {lo'e} and partially 
in discussion of pervasion). But in the process, I think that what standard 
{lo'e} is about has become clearer than it ever was before -- though still 
somewhat unsatisfactory (I'd like some rules about expansion). This fits the 
examples and uses so far and brings them under a meaningful rubric -- which 
they have previously lacked. (But, on the other hand, no one ever likes my 
interpretations, so all this is unlikely to fly. And the explanation is 
itself full of unexplored traps -- hypotheticals and the like. which is why 
the {lo'e} in the first place.)

<<> la and cusku di'e
> 
> >So how would you do "The [generic] lion lives in Africa"?
> 
> I think I would say:
> 
> lo'e cinfo cu xabju le friko
> 
> to say that Africa has lions. I agree that {loi} would work
> just as well here, and so would {lo}.

Fair enough. Let me change the example:

"Humans give birth to live young."

The intended meaning is that this is part of what it is to be
human; it is an ingredient of humanness.
Well, I don't yet see why {lo'e cinfo cu xabju lo friko} means "Africa has 
lions," if that is different from "The [generic] lion inhabits Africa" (for 
one thing, the latter, like the Llamban sentence, is probably false, and the 
former true, but more, the Llamban sentence is about lions -- or something 
closely related to them, not about Africa, aboutness being a rhetorical 
rather than a semantic property.)
But the new example ought to fit xorxes perfectly, roughly {lo'e remna cu se 
jbena [lo/lo'e/?] jmive} : "Vivaparosity pervades humanity" "If a human were 
to give birth, the born would be alive."

<<
> lo'e cinfu cu xabju le friko po'o
> 
> Only Africa is inhabited by lions: The lion lives (only) in Africa.
> {loi} and {lo} would not work here due to scope issues. We would
> need to put {le friko po'o} in front of the {su'o} quantifier to
> get the right sense:
> 
> le friko po'o cu se xabju loi cinfo

Not the meaning I was trying to get. I'll just comment (i) that I 
dislike using {po'o} for "only", and (ii) that I think you example
should be {le friko ku po'o}.
Actually, if we follow the gismu list, this is one of the rare examples of 
{po'o} being used approximately correctly: "Africa is the only example of a 
place inhabited by lions." (I think the list is wrong in even trying to pull 
this trick or in trying to do a replcia of English "only" - which is odd 
even in English).

<<
If you asked me out of the blue how to say "that is a picture of
a boa", I'd offer {ta pixra lo ka'e sincrboa}, assuming that the
possible-worlds construal of the ka'e-series cmavo, rather than
the capability construal. (I.e. {lo ka'e sincrboa} = "that which
in some world is a boa" & not "that which in this world is
capable of being a boa".)
That will probably not do for xorxes, since a possible boa is, in its own 
realm, a particular one and "{lo'e} cannot be expressed in terms of {lo} and 
{le}."
Of course, there is also the question of whether {ka'e} can bear the 
"possible" as opposed to "potential" meaning. CLL waffles, it seems to me, 
and so does usage (and which level of potentiality or possibility is not very 
clear either.)

<<
I don't see that this would generalize to liking chocolate, but
I guess I'm wondering whether {lo'e} is being used as a panacea
to disparate or at least separately soluble problems.
A pleasant thought projected onto standard {lo'e}: maybe the lack uniform 
rules for expanding is because there are genuinely different thing going on, 
not just different predications and the same type of transformation.