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

From: Adam Raizen <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 03 Dec 2002 00:53:14 +0200

de'i li 2002-12-01 ti'u li 11:13:00 la'o zoi. Jordan DeLong .zoi cusku di'e

>On Sun, Dec 01, 2002 at 03:04:48PM +0200, Adam Raizen wrote:
>> de'i li 2002-11-30 ti'u li 10:33:00 la'o zoi. Avital Oliver .zoi cusku di'e
>
>Hey---shouldn't that be 30:11:2002 (or even better, but I doubt
>i'll convince you of this: cino pi'e papa pi'e renonore; but it's
>definitely unfortunate to use different symbols for pi'e on de'i
>and ti'u).

Maybe, but to change any part of it I would have to change the date
format for my whole computer, which I'm not going to do. I also don't
think it matters so much to have different symbols for pi'e in
different contexts. Also, as for big-endian vs. little-endian date
format, I intend to use big-endian in general regardless of which
language I'm using, so I don't think that it would make much sense to
make an exception for lojban.

>[...]
>> >The sentence "Homosexuals aren't supposed to
>> You could say "ma minde fi lo'e nu naku lo nanmu cu gletu lo nanmu",
>> but you might get the response "no da minde .i javni ma'i le ka rarna".
>> (I'm not sure what the difference is between the first and second place
>> of javni; if anyone has any ideas, it should probably go into the
>> bpfk's work.) I don't think that you'll be able to refute many
>> arguments in political debates just by translating them into Lojban,
>> but you may be able to reach each side's assumptions faster.
>
>x1 of javni is like x1 of minde, and x2 is like x2 of minde. I
>think Nick said that the BFPK will not be looking at gismu, but
>because javni has a modal it will probably be addressed.

The definition of javni in the gimste is: "x1 is a rule
prescribing/mandating/requiring x2 (event/state) within
system/community x3". I don't really see a parallel between minde1 and
javni1; minde1 is an agent, and I don't see javni1 as an agent. By
'rule', don't we mean what the rule prescribes? What's the difference?
Also, I can see a parallel between javni3 and minde2: they're both
something which must conform to some edict, or between javni1 or javni2
and minde3: they're both some kind of an edict, but not between javni2
and minde2. As I understand it, the bpfk has the authority to clarify
confusing gismu definitions.

>[...]
>> Actually, I think that what we're trying to express here is deontic
>> modality, so you could say "nomu'eiku lo nanmu cu gletu lo nanmu",
>> understanding no to be quantifying over worlds where the rule is
>> followed. If we had a way to explicitly note that mu'ei is deontic,
>> we might also be able to note which rule or rule system is used.
>
>How about doing that with marde?

You could do it with marde or other selbrivla, but that would defeat
the point of using mu'ei at all, which is that modal operators act as
unary operators on propositions (like na, for example), and not as
propositions themselves. We could paraphrase all uses of na with jitfa,
but that doesn't mean that it's desirable.

>mu'ei could do it, but I hope that if mu'ei becomes official it
>either (a) gets moved to MOI or something so it can allow specifying
>the type of modality, or (b) it gets pinned down to epistemological
>modality in all circumstances.

I think it needs to be a tense, since tenses are the things which
act like unary operators. Even if mu'ei were limited to epistemic
modality, there would probably still be a need to indicate which
set of facts were used to limit the possible worlds.

>The problem with (a) is that we lose the ability to do forethought
>with it, and to use it in sumti tcita. Instead it would always
>have to be at the main brivla (or just in front of it). So I'd
>probably prefer (b), perhaps with the use of other mu'ei-like cmavo
>for different concepts of necessity (perhaps ma'ei for moral
>necessity?).

The potential number of ways to limit the possible worlds is quite
large, so I would like to see the number of these cmavo not get out of
control. What I was thinking of was something like 'ma'i le marde
PAmu'ei'. Since the ma'i-phrase has scope over the mu'ei, it could be
interpreted as constraining the set of worlds that are quantified over.
Similarly, 'ma'i le logji PAmu'ei' for logical modality and 'ma'i lei
se djuno PAmu'ei' for epistemic modality, etc., with the interpretation
of unadorned mu'ei being left to context. I would also like to get
ba'oi in here somehow, but I'm still thinking about it.

mu'o mi'e .adam.