Subject: lo'edu'u

From: Nick Nicholas <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 23:23:47 +1100

Lojbanists, walking home tonight, I had an epiphany.

And is right on lo'edu'u. And I'm going to make this part of _Lojban 
for Intermediates_ one day.

Let me explain. Bob harrumphed at And saying lo'edu'u is too long, and 
And saying people are wrong to say lenu when they mean lo'edu'u. If you 
look at And's prose on the wiki, his predilection for lo'edu'u really 
sticks out unpleasantly.

And then, I thought a couple of hours ago, walking to my car at the 
train station, what he was doing. It's forehead slappingly clear to me 
now.

OK, what's the deal with this lo'e? It was a recent debate on jboske, 
and a hectic one at that, but it looks like And's myopic singulariser 
won over Jorge's intensional article (though they may converge yet.) 
Gobbledygook. OK, let me walk through it. (What I'm going to say may 
not contradict Jorge's lo'e, actually, but we'll defer that debate to 
jboske.)

When you say "The lion lives in Africa"... no, let's drop that. When 
you say "The typical American likes baseball" what do you mean?

ro merko cu nelci le kelcrbeisbolo . No, that's claiming every single 
one does, and that's not true.

so'a merko cu nelci le kelcrbeisbolo . Kinda a true, I suppose, but 
it's not capturing the notion of it being typical, it being normal, it 
being a generalisation. Now, we have tense cmavo for that. But let's 
see what other gadri can do for us.

loi merko cu nelci le kelcrbeisbolo . Actually no. For all the talk of 
Mr Water and Mr Rabbit that erstwhile Lojban pedagogy has used, masses 
are not in fact what you need here. A mass simply says that you cannot 
make the bridi claim of individuals in the group, but only in the whole 
group. {loi nanmu cu bevri le pipno}: not Andrew, Barry and Chris each 
carried the piano, but the three of them in concert carried the piano. 
Now, is that relevant here? Surely not. Andrew can like baseball all on 
his lonesome, without needing any assistance from Barry or Chris.

The answer to our question, of course, is lo'e merko cu nelci le 
kelcrbeisbolo : The American (the typical American) likes baseball.

So where does this lo'e merko d00d live? How many kids has she got? Did 
he cheat on his taxes last year? Do you think she'll go out with me?

Now, these questions are nonsense, right? But why? For any American {ro 
da poi ke'a merko je prenu}, you should be able to ask how many kids 
they've got. Why can't I ask that about this lo'e merko d00d?

Because this lo'e merko d00d isn't a person. S/he's a phantom. An 
abstraction, if you will.

The average American may have 1.3 kids, but no one person alive has a 
fractional offspring. That's because the average American is a 
mathematical abstraction out of all the Americans out there --- the 
childful and the childless. Now, count all the Americans there are. Bob 
and John and Robin and xod and Jay and Mark and and and. They all have 
names; this is an extensionally defined set (meaning you can count 'em.)

Now squint. Squint enough, that all the differences between these 
Americans fade out. What are you left with?

What you're left with is an abstraction. But this abstraction, this 
phantom, still has some properties. It has the properties that most 
individual Americans normally has. So you can speak about those 
properties; you can make propositional claims about this phantom. But 
not every claim you can make of an individual American can be made of 
this phantom too.

.i xu la bab. rirni re da .i go'i
.i xu la djan. rirni re da .i na go'i
.i xu lo'e merko cu rirni re da .i na go'i
...
.i xu la fred. nakni .i go'i
.i xu la salis. nakni .i na go'i
.i xu lo'e merko cu nakni .i ba'e na'i go'i

Moreover, you can count individuals; but you cannot count this phantom. 
When you squint, you see one abstract generalisation. re lo'e merko is 
meaningless. If the average American earns $50k, can the average 
American get together with another average American and buy Enron 
shares? That's meaningless. (There is such a thing as an average 
couple; but that's another story.)

The details of what you can and cannot claim of this phantom 
generalisation figure are still hazy; but let's move on to clausal 
abstractions.

Lojban is odd among the languages I know, at least, in that it treats 
nominalisations --- clausal abstractions --- exactly like any other 
sumti. In particular, you can count most sumti; they're extensional. 
Well, you can count nominalisations too.

So far so good? You can speak of {pa cifno} and {re cinfo}; you can 
also speak of {pa nu cecla} and {re nu cecla}.

What's so surprising about that? We say "one shooting" and "two 
shootings" in English. We understand them as bounded events, in 
particular places with particular participants, and distinguishable 
from each other; so Oswald and Kennedy were involved in one shooting, 
and Lincoln and Booth in another.

So. You like swimming, ok? How many swimmings do you like?

Here we have a problem. What does {mi nelci lenu mi limna} mean? "I 
like swimming", you might think. Think again. What would {mi nelci le 
merko} mean? That you love all Americans on earth? Probably not. 
Probably you're referring to a specific, context-salient American. One 
American is distinct from another; you can separate them from each 
other, and single out the one you like in particular.

What does {lenu mi limna} mean? It doesn't mean 'swimming' in general. 
No sir. It means a swim. A particular swim, just as {le merko} means a 
particular American. What distinguishes Americans from each other? 
Their properties, their names, whatever. What distinguishes particular 
events from each other? Their times, their places, their arguments. 
{lenu mi limna la pacifikas de'i li 2002pi'e5pi'e1} is distinct from 
{lenu mi limna la atlantikas de'i li 2001pi'e3pi'e15}.

"But I ain't talking about swimming in the Pacific on May Day, or in 
the Atlantic on the Ides of March. I'm talking about swimming in 
general."

"Nonsense. If you have {le nu limna}, you have {le nu da limna de de'i 
di}. There are only specific events of swimming --- specific swims; 
just as there are only specific Americans. There are no such things as 
generalisations of events; there are only particular events holding 
between particular participants at particular times and places..."

... unless you squint.

Conjure up in your mind all the swims you've had, real and potential. 
Squint away their particular details. What are you left with? You're 
left with a phantom abstraction --- as opposed to a concrete 
abstraction! --- which involves you, and water, and not much else. 
Because everything else is details, and you're squinting those away. 
What you're left with, is swimming.

So. I liked my swim : .i mi nelci lenu mi limna
I like swimming: .i mi nelci lo'enu mi limna

Once you abstract out {lo'e nu limna} from {ro lonu limna}, you'll find 
there are things you can say about any particular swim, that you just 
cannot say about swimming in general. Just as it's meaningful to say 
whether the typical American likes baseball, but not whether the 
typical American will go out with you Friday week. So:

.i do nelci lenu do limna de'i ma .i de'i li 2002pi'e5pi'e1
.i do nelci lo'enu do limna de'i ma
--- .i na'i su'o da zo'u: mi nelci lo'enu mi limna de'i da

Swimming ain't swims. It's a mooshy glob of swims. That's why And is 
saying it as lo'enu. For that matter, that's why Jorge and And have 
said it as tu'o nu.

The whole point of squinting is to see one mooshy glob instead of five 
hundred sharp focus individuals. If you can still discern two or three, 
you're not squinting hard enough. And there's not much point in 
counting when there can be only one thing to count. tu'o is the 
non-number; it's the refusal to count. So it's been invoked in this 
cause too.

One last step. At the last minute, Lojban introduced a distinction 
between {nu}, stuff that happens in the world, and {du'u}, claims about 
the world, concepts about what's going on. Languages sometimes 
distinguish between them, but not as routinely as Lojban does. If 
something is {nu}, it's not {du'u}; and vice versa. If you want 
something covering both, you use {su'u}. I doubt most Lojbanists know 
su'u is even there; and as I said in the lessons, I think they should, 
because people may well not want to make the nu/du'u distinction.

So, when you know that Fred swims, you know a claim, not an event. And 
just like events, claims are specific; they have all their arguments 
filled. So you can know the propositions: {mi djuno ledu'u la fred. 
limna la pacifikas de'i li 2002pi'e5pi'e1}, and {mi djuno ledu'u la 
fred. limna la atlantikas de'i li 2001pi'e3pi'e15}, and {mi djuno 
ledu'u la fred. limna la .indikas de'i li 2001pi'e7pi'e14}. And then, 
you can squint, and induce a generalisation: {mi djuno lo'edu'u la 
fred. limna}. {limna ma}? The question is invalid. You're not making a 
claim about a particular swim, in a particular body of liquid. You're 
generalising.

Is this tinkering? Is this casuistry? Is this pedantry? No, lojbanists. 
This is Lojban. The minute you let {lo'e} into the language alongside 
{le}, and {du'u} alongside {nu}, you create a distinction. If you 
ignore that distinction, you are misusing Lojban, as surely as if you 
say {re} instead of {pa}. English uses 'that' for {lenu}, {lo'enu}, 
{lo'edu'u}, {loisu'u}, and any number of other possibilities. Lojban 
requires a distinction. {le} presupposes you can count the referents. 
{nu} presupposes the referent is an event. If you always say {lenu} 
where you should be saying {lo'edu'u} instead, you're just calquing 
'that'. You're not thinking Lojbanically. And if you wanted English...

Should I have realised this was going on a long time ago? I suppose so; 
but when the jboskeists say this stuff, people tune out, and that's a 
shame. We need fluffy pedagogy to prevent this; I'm starting to think 
that's my real job in Lojban. (If I can't become a lecturer, I'll try 
the next best thing...) Am I happy about this realisation? No. It makes 
Lojban even nastier than I'd have liked. Then again, when I learned 
Lojban noone bothered distinguishing between {ka} and {nu} either, 
{ce'u} hadn't occurred to anyone --- and bet your bottom dollar, noone 
said anything but {lenu}.

And what do I think now that I realise the error of my ways, and then 
see the language designer say he doesn't know what {lo'edu'u} means, 
and won't be told by a jboskeist what it means? I say he needs to learn 
Lojban. ;-)

Is the language changing every month these days? Actually it is. Two 
years ago, people weren't using {ce'u}, and were using {ka} a lot more. 
Not because we've been tinkering with the language, but because we're 
understanding more of the semantics of this language, and moving 
steadily away from literal code substitutions of English. This will 
keep happening. And this is the kind of thing both formalists and 
Sapir-Whorfists (to use xod's recent wiki term) should welcome: Lojban 
not being a code for English, but making subtler, weirder 
differentiations. Does this mean we have to unlearn stuff? Yeah. But 
this is different from tinkering. This is us reading the baseline more 
closely, and realising its consequences more fully. This is us staying 
longer and longer in Lojbanistan, and starting to pick up some of the 
idiom. This is trumping past usage and custom; but it *is* sticking by 
the baseline (which trumps usage anyway), and it's what we're here for.

OK. Some of you knew this stuff all along, and am wondering why I'm 
making this song and dance --- and why I got so much of it wrong. :-) 
Some of you are going to find this news, and unpleasant news at that. 
And you may accept this or you may reject this. But I think this does 
matter, and it's what should be going into _Lojban for Intermediates_ 
(which this was a dry run for.) Comments on pedagogy and politics 
welcome here; comments on technical details, to jboske please.

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* Dr Nick Nicholas, French & Italian, University of Melbourne, 
Australia *
[email-masked] 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. 
*
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