Subject: Re: [lojban] Centripetal-centrifugal, little-endian--big-endian, subsets-contents, etc.

From: PILCH Hartmut <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 May 2000 20:02:26 +0000 (/etc/localtime)

> Obviously all has to do with what one is most likely to want
> to communicate or to leave out. We discuss recent events more
> often than remote ones, so years are elided more often than days
> -- otoh, seconds are not very useful on their own.

No. This has to do with what the speaker thinks of first. Not with what
needs to be communicated first. Speech is shaped in a field of forces 
between two poles: the laziness of the speaker and that of the listener.

Also, speaking of elision here is wrong. When I say "I will come on the
18th", I am not eliding anything. I am just assuming that the container
from which both the speaker and the listener set out is this month. Or I
am perhaps just a lazy speaker.

Elision is something different. It means eliding something that is
mandated by syntax. In the above example no month specification is
mandated by any syntax. 

Otherwise you would have to construe even a date like 2000-05-18 as an
elision. I elided the "A.D.", didn't I? Not only that, I must have
elided a string of infinite length, something like "A.D. according to the
calendar system of planet earth of the solar system of galactical age .. "

-phm