From lojbab@lojban.org Thu May 11 11:26:37 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 28586 invoked from network); 11 May 2000 18:26:37 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by m1.onelist.org with QMQP; 11 May 2000 18:26:37 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO stmpy.cais.net) (205.252.14.63) by mta3 with SMTP; 11 May 2000 18:26:36 -0000 Received: from bob (209-8-89-91.dynamic.cais.com [209.8.89.91]) by stmpy.cais.net (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id OAA05463 for ; Thu, 11 May 2000 14:25:00 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <4.2.2.20000511063957.00adeca0@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: vir1036/pop.cais.com@127.0.0.1 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.2.2 Date: Thu, 11 May 2000 06:48:30 -0400 To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Centripetal-centrifugal, little-endian--big-endian, subsets-contents, etc. In-Reply-To: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" At 09:39 PM 05/10/2000 +0000, PILCH Hartmut wrote: > > 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. > >The European languages are a tiny minority on the planet, but they have, >not through language design merits, marginalised most of the others. Human languages are not designed, and are absolutely equal in terms of "design merits". > > 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. > >You mean something like > > the year 2001 . > which year 20001 ? > the year 2001 of the 5th month . > of which month 5 ? > the year 2001 of the 5th month of the 20th day . No. You are using English language to talk about set membership, and that requires the subset first, hence as he said dmy results. >but I fail to assign this any meaning. Because you tried to express English as ymd, and it doesn't work. lojbab ---- lojbab lojbab@lojban.org Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org (newly updated!)