From opoudjis@optushome.com.au Tue Nov 05 20:22:43 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: opoudjis@optushome.com.au X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_2_3_0); 6 Nov 2002 04:22:43 -0000 Received: (qmail 96489 invoked from network); 6 Nov 2002 04:22:43 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.218) by m12.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 6 Nov 2002 04:22:43 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO cygnus.its.unimelb.EDU.AU) (128.250.20.112) by mta3.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 6 Nov 2002 04:22:43 -0000 Received: from CONVERSION-DAEMON by SMTP.UNIMELB.EDU.AU (PMDF V5.2-29 #46888) id <01KOJW76OR2O914KDU@SMTP.UNIMELB.EDU.AU> for lojban@yahoogroups.com; Wed, 6 Nov 2002 15:22:40 +1100 Received: from [128.250.86.21] (porchermac.language.unimelb.edu.au [128.250.86.21]) by SMTP.UNIMELB.EDU.AU (PMDF V5.2-29 #46888) with ESMTP id <01KOJW75PETC91HJ50@SMTP.UNIMELB.EDU.AU> for lojban@yahoogroups.com; Wed, 06 Nov 2002 15:22:40 +1100 Date: Wed, 06 Nov 2002 15:21:23 +1100 Subject: Re: What the heck is this crap? X-Sender: opoudjis@mail.optushome.com.au To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" From: Nick Nicholas X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=90350612 X-Yahoo-Profile: opoudjis Oh, and a meta-note? Now you know how I felt about having to relearn {ka... ce'u}. Folks, I may be regarded as tainted by hardlinerism in saying this, but really, relax. This is not a disaster. Just as {ka.. ce'u} wasn't. But it does accord with how we understand scoping to work in general; and yes, I believe that scoping takes precedence over place conversion. If enough people feel it shouldn't, then it won't happen in actual spoken Lojban. But the scoping thing is, I believe, consistent with the spirit of Lojban. It's *loj*-ban for a reason, after all. You can say the scoping rule is a natural-language inspired piece of arbitrariness, shoehorned into formal logic; but there does have to be *a* rule for scoping somewhere. If {ro da cu xebni su'o de} == {su'o de cu se xebni ro da}, then how do we pick whether the primary meaning is AxEy or EyAx? By the unconverted bridi? But what if we wanted to define {bu'a} as {se xebni}? Would {su'o de cu bu'a ro da} still mean "everyone hates something"? But yes. We do need a _Lojban for Intermediates_. And it needs to be smooth and paedagogical -- the formal definition can wait, or can stay on 'that other list'. Btw, this is why the list schism is bullshit, as far as I'm concerned. Naturalists ignore what the jboskeists say at their own peril. And the jboskeists bore non-jboskeists shitless --- more importantly, to the point of tuning out --- at their own peril. Yeah. This dictionary compilation sure is going to be a barrel of laughs... :-| -- **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** * Dr Nick Nicholas, Linguistics/French & Italian nickn@unimelb.edu.au * University of Melbourne, Australia http://www.opoudjis.net * "Eschewing obfuscatory verbosity of locutional rendering, the * circumscriptional appelations are excised." --- W. Mann & S. Thompson, * _Rhetorical Structure Theory: A Theory of Text Organisation_, 1987. * **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** ****