Subject: Centripetal-centrifugal, little-endian--big-endian, subsets-contents, etc.

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 14:04:01 EDT

Thanks to Pilch and Helsem, the terminologies are starting to get a bit 
clearer here:
centrifugal = little-endian = specification to the right = principal 
information last
centripetal = big-endian = specification to the left = principal information 
first = tanru

Which raises the question of what "principal information" means: the 
narrowest category or the broadest? 10-5-00 is centrifugal and 00-5-10 is 
centripetal so apparently is is the broadest category (year here) that is 
principal. But then ordinary tanru are said to be centripetal and they 
regularly have the broadest category (modified) at the right end. 

Pilch:
<<In real-life, a certain day is a component of a month, just like a key is
a component of a keybox.>>
"component"? a day is a member of a set or sequence of days that is a month, 
a key is simply in a keybox. a content of a container (I am envisioning a 
physical key and a box that contains it; am I missing something here?)

<<However when I say "the 20th" I don't refer to a certain day, but to a
large set of possible days (keys) in an infinite number of possible
containers (months). The box-key is thus a subset or the set called
"key".>>
But typically, when I say "the 20th" I AM referring to a certain day ({le 
renomoi}, not {lo renomoi}), although my hearer may not be sure which one and 
so ask: "Which 20th." In that sense "20th day" is a general noun, referring 
to (in fact) the whole set of days, since each is the 20th in some sequence 
(maybe even some month). And so my answer does pick out a subset of days, 
those that fall in month 5 (probably about one twelfth of all days, scattered 
fairly systematically through the set/sequence) assuming we agree on our 
calendars, of course. And then, to nail it down we pick one continuous 365 
(in this case 6) day chunk, a year, and so get the 20th of the 5 in that year 
(we assume these only happen once in a year) OK; I think that is an odd way 
to think of dates, but it is coherent. And it matches the pattern for key => 
box-key => boxkeybox-key (aside from the joke): class A, subset of A by B, 
subset of A by(subset of B by C). C is now the principal information and 
also the narrowest category in this case, though the largest set in the end 
result.

<<We have here the notions of subset vs component, which are easy to
confuse.>>
I think that I am confused, especially since it seems to me that the previous 
section just treated them as the same. What is the significant difference 
for present purposes?

<<It is good language design to expand tanru by prepending rather than by
appending, because in address constructions (including places, names,
dates etc) the subset-specifier is usually also a container, and it is a
necessity of human thinking to proceed from the container to the
contained. >>
I am not clear how it is that a subset specifier is usually also a container. 
That is true in geographical addresses in a loose sort of way, but not 
obviously for names or dates or electronic addresses. Nor is it obvious that 
human though goes from container to content any more necessarily than from 
content to container. And it is unclear what all this is building to.

<<Computers can use little-endian, because they are independent
of time. >>
This is news to computers I know. I suspect that this is meant in some 
particular way. What?
<< Human thinking cannot procede in a little-endian manner, because
time has only one direction. One will always start at a certain container
level and proced inwards to the center from there (centripetal).>>
Well, not centripetal in the sense above, but now more literally (th source 
of the metaphor?) And I still see little evidence that this is the way human 
though inevitably (or even usually) flows.
<< If the language offers only a centrifugal addressing pattern, that can 
only mean
that the human mind has to make an extra effort at transposing. Such
efforts are quite normal in natural languages, but the Logical Language
experiment is designed to eliminate them as far as possible.>>
I am inclined to think that the fact that human languages fairly regularly 
offer centrifugal constructions is itself evidence that the centripetal-only 
thought pattern is not in fact the rule. 

And, of course, none of this decides the structure of dates, since it is 
equally possible (and, to me, more natural) to take the year as the name of a 
set and a month as specifying a subset within that set and the day as 
specifying a unit subset within that and thus get dmy again but as a 
centripetal structure.

<<renonono nanca [no]mu masti pano djedi
renonono [no]mu pano 
nomu masti pano
nomu pano

etc>>
Of course if you label the units (as the Chinese fairly regularly do) then 
you can use any order, since there is no ambiguity about what the numbers 
mean. the problem at hand is a convention which does without unit labels and 
still allows dropping items with minimal markings to indicate where we are in 
the sequence.

<>
One final item on centripetal -- left expanding -- strings. My memory of 
Language Theory (admittedly often 40 years old) is that there was an 
empirical law to the effect that there was an upper limit (probably the 
classic 5+/- 2) on the length of left-branching structures that a human mind 
could process. Insofar as centripetal structures are left-branching (and 
that may vary with the kind of structure) this would mean that they could not 
handle all situations, that some centrifugal forms are necessary. Does 
anyone know whether that rule has been repudiated? Can anyone work out the 
branching structure of various types of centripetal constructions?