Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: ka ka (was: Context Leapers)

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2002 15:40:16 EDT

In a message dated 9/28/2002 6:20:04 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

<<
> I find it meaningless because the two clauses are saying the same thing
> (describing the same reality) in different words. "whereas" signals a
> difference in fact, not a difference of phrasing.
>>
I still don't see what is evidence that the two are talking about the same 
thing. They are describing the same reality, but different aspects of it. 
The sky appears blue and is also a mixture of gases in such-and-such a ratio: 
same reality but hardly the same thing. I take it that, in this case as so 
often, non-equivalent differences in phrasing signal differences in fact 
(though not necessarily in realities, which is hardly claimed).

<<
Sumti is a thing in a relationship; tergi'u is a place of a gismu. In "da
broda", da is the sumti, and it is occupying the first tergi'u of broda.
Is this continuation of the problem meant to help? I take it that you are 
using {sumti} to refer to an extralinguistic object. Is {gismu} and so 
{tergi'u} referring to a word or the referent of that word (a non-linguistic 
object)? Then you say"da is a sumti," which on the basis of what you said 
before seems to mean "something is an object in some relation -- though {da} 
does not usually work as a quantified variable in English and the whole looks 
as though you meant {da} is a word in the first place of the selbri {sumti} 
is the bridi {da sumti} -- which is certainly true, but not interesting. We 
have good use-mention conventions for avoiding these confusions and, either 
you ar violating them, or you are saying something too strange for me to 
figure out without a lot more explanation tha you give. And neither seems at 
the moment ot bear on the issue at hand.

<<
ka + ce'u describe tergi'u, not sumti. It is well-defined, whereas your
usage of ka without any ce'u is ill-defined, very subjective including any
feelings anyone has about the fact that da is in broda1, and I believe it
was trounced, a casualty in the last gang bang of ka. It's also been
abandoned by usage as far as I see, all users now sticking to the doctrine
that every ka has at least one ce'u, and they write it explicitly.
Clear start: the combination of the words {ka} and {ce'u} describe (= are 
used to refer to) a place in a relation (or a place in a sentence?) and not a 
thing (or NP in a sentence). 
As for the rest, I am not sure that what I said was much discussed in the 
last round aon {ka} and {du'u}, which seemed to be mostly about whether and 
where {ce'u} was to be used. the result is a thoroughly redundant system, 
made worse by people still using it in at least three ways. I would be happy 
it it really were decided, though I do not see that that would necessarily 
eliminate the {ka} with gapless bridi.

<<
The reality remains the same whether we describe it as 34 degrees or as
"cold". While one may choose either wording, I hardly see why a different
cmavo to signal the "distinction" is anything but confusing. And that's
borne out by the observation that many people have tried to construe ni as
a counting mechanism (somehow abstracting the number of entities
somewhere), which I attribute to the fact that its correct interpretation
is redundant and useless.
What reality? 34 degrees describes a reality of a pointer on a meter of some 
sort. To be useful outside scientific studies, that reading has to correlate 
with (and, hence, be different from) other factors: sensations, observed 
behaviors of objects, etc. Both descriptions are legitimate, even if the 
reality is the same, the relevant factors are different. 
Oh, is it {ni} that is redundant? It is not its fault that we don't know how 
to use it (did anyone but you actually use it as a counting mechanism?). But 
surely we have quantitative comments about events other than how many things 
are involved: intensity, and the like being the most obvious. What is 
certainly right is that such a short word as {ni} should not have been used 
for it.

<<
He's tall, but everyone who calls him tall know there are things taller
than he is. Thus, "tall" never meant "infinitely tall" and everything
remains consistent.
Yes, there are probably men taller than Kareem, but that doesn't mean that it 
is more true that they are tall. At a certain point you generally (as I 
said, you could, I suppose, set up an infinite scale, but it wouldn't be very 
useful) flatten out (and introduce variants using "very" or "scarcely" and 
the like). There are surely some correlations between actual height in 
units, quantity of being tall, and the truth of the claim that one is tall, 
but the mapping do not have to be linear in any way -- and usually aren't.