Subject: [lojban] Re: Specific example of Sapir-Whorf in English OR How Lojban made me think more clearly

From: "Avital Oliver" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2002 21:37:01 -0500

From: "Invent Yourself" <[email-masked]>

> On Sat, 30 Nov 2002, Avital Oliver wrote:
>
> > The fact that english allows this to be said without having to notice
the
> > 'missing' "x1" would cause, assuming Sapir-Whorf, for people to believe
that
> > there are things that were "meant to be" even though they do not believe
in
> > 'God'.
>
> The SW appears here: do English speakers somehow anthropomorphize
> non-static non-sentients more than speakers of a language that can express
> the idea without relying on the above hack? What about Hebrew; does it too
> try to force its speakers into using similar phrasing?
In Hebrew the standard term for such quasi-homophibics is the word "amur",
which normally translates as "supposed to be", although it is actually
derived from the root alef-mem-resh, meaning "to say". I would assume the
original meaning of "amur" in this context would be "is told to...". Thus,
"amur" is actually a selbri of the form "x1 told x2 to do x3", where
normally the x1 is not used (it is actually akward and many people would not
even realize how to access x1). The sentence "Homosexuals aren't supposed to
be" would be represented as <zo'e AMUR loi nanmu lenu na gletu loi nanmu>,
or in Hebrew, "GVARIM AMURIM LO LISHKAV IM GVARIM".

So, to make things short, Hebrew has just the same kind of flaw, and similar
to 'supposed to', it also does not allow for easy accessing of the sentient
intender. Oh, and the same goes for "Information wants to be free" and
"Objects want to fall downwards".

> In this month's issue of New Scientist there is a cover story about the
> comeback of SW thinking in defiance of the Chomskian hegemony. Perhaps
> their website (ostensibly http://www.newscientist.com/) will feel like
> working again by the time you read this mail.
Wow. I'm guessing Lojban isn't reffered to there, though. If SW is coming
back to relevance, does this mean Lojban might become academically
interesting/important?

-Avital.