From lojbab@lojban.org Mon Jun 26 12:25:51 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 8035 invoked from network); 26 Jun 2000 19:25:48 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by m1.onelist.org with QMQP; 26 Jun 2000 19:25:48 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO stmpy-5.cais.net) (205.252.14.75) by mta2 with SMTP; 26 Jun 2000 19:25:48 -0000 Received: from bob (46.dynamic.cais.com [207.226.56.46]) by stmpy-5.cais.net (8.10.1/8.9.3) with ESMTP id e5QJPkL31772 for ; Mon, 26 Jun 2000 15:25:47 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from lojbab@lojban.org) Message-Id: <4.2.2.20000626150526.00b921d0@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: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 15:26:07 -0400 To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] As Kunsunlundz said... [was RE: RECORD:containers] In-Reply-To: <7c.74fccee.2688befe@aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" At 10:13 AM 06/26/2000 -0400, pycyn@aol.com wrote: >So, after all the rhetoric against JCB for taking all predications without >specific markers as merely potential, we end up in essentially the same >place. I don't remember a lot of rhetoric on that subject, but no, I don't think we ended at the same place. We ended at potentially the same place %^) Seriously, a predication without specific marker is elliptical-tense. That is not "merely potential" - it means that the tense is what context demands. In the absence of context, a potential tense is a possible interpretation, and some specific contexts may demand a potential tense as interpretation. Isn't this what we were trying for in saying that Loglan/Lojban was a tense-optional language? > I assume that our rhetoric for it is somewhat different (an >unspecified tense -- nevermind that tense is not an obligatory category in lb >-- may be located anywhere in the spatio-temporal-possible-imaginal world?). OK, I think. >Well, at least this allows me to call a bottle a bottle even if it never does >in fact have anything in it, because it is the sort of thing that in many >worlds better run than this one would have something in it. What I can >presumably not say of my empty bottle is {ta ca botpi}. No. Because as has been noted, your "empty" bottle has air or something in it, so it is not the case, absent the use of a vacuum pump, that it is actually without contents of any kind. You cannot say "ta ca'a botpi zu'i" It is therefore a little unclear what to do with a vacuum pump emptied bottle, except maybe to use kunti as the main selbri and le botpi which allows the not-quite veridical bottle because empty of amy contents. >This seems a little >odd, since when I say {ta botpi} I am probably NOT thinking of them worlds >over there and then but of the bottle I have in my hand here and now, that is >the untensed form is contextually focused to the present. (This was at the >heart of the rhetoric against JCB, as I recall, as well.) We beat a lot of the JCB rap by changing zo'e into a true ellipsis - if there is context that can supply a value of zo'e that makes the statement true, then predication works. 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