Subject: Re: [lojban] response to And

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 14:37:02 -0500 (EST)

And Rosta scripsit:

> Is the sentence "This teddy is a cribe" 100% true? Not if cribe
> means 'bear'.

Well, in fact I find the sentence "This teddy is a bear" perfectly reasonable
and am quite ready to believe it. To me, bears are categorized as the
brown/grizzly, the American black, the polar, the panda, and the stuffed.
And perhaps other categories, and indeed Irene's Larry is +stuffed +polar.
So for me "la laris. pe la .airin. cribe" is true.

Now I grant that Larry is not a prototypical bear, and I may even say
"Larry is not a real bear", where "real" means something like -fictional
-stuffed.

> I have often had the experience of one person asking "what does cmavo
> X mean", and other people racking their heads as to what, given the
> minimal info in CLL and the mahoste, it could possibly mean. Often
> the process takes the form "Well, we have no idea what it could mean,
> so let's invent a meaning that seems useful and is compatible with
> Woldy and the mahoste". These are the cases I'd prefer to leave to
> Usage's Decision.

You suffer from this because your notion of "meaning" is disconnected from
real meaning, i.e. pragmatic meaning. (That is to say, you suffer for your
bad philosophy.)

> I notice myself and many others engaging in syllable counting as a
> heavily weighted criterion for stylistically evaluating a sentence.

Ack pfft!

-- 
We call nothing profound [email-masked]
that is not wittily expressed. John Cowan
--Northrop Frye (improved) http://www.reutershealth.com