Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Careful with noi!

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2000 11:40:29 -0400 (EDT)

On Sun, 20 Aug 2000, Alfred W. Tueting (Tüting) wrote:

> With the funny result that /zi'o/ extinguishes a place while/by
> sitting in it ;)

*shrug* It was a last-minute kludge, not something worked into the
language from the beginning, to meet certain vaguely formulated but
cogent objections.

> If I understand this right, it's a way of "creating" new brivla by
> cutting off one or more places for relationships to "dock on". It 
> would be marvellous having a method to create new places too ... ;)

Yes, that is what the modals are for.

> So, e.g. a /botpi zi'o/ doesn't mean at all that it contains nothing,
> but only that the new word does not consider the container 
> property *grammatically*. (Just as if talking about /ninmu/ without
> having structural means to state to how many children 
> they've given birth, or about /cinfo/ without a place for their
> intestine's length.) On the other hand, zi'oing out a place is *
> obvious* - hence the reader/listener realizes that this was done
> *intentionally*! So, why e.g. using /botpi zi'o/ instead of just /
> botpi/ or /botpi zo'e .../ *if there is no intention to express that
> it isn't "bottling" anything* (and not even potentially)?!

In dealing with a Gricean listener, that is plausible reasoning.
However, a mechanical or naive listener will understand only projection;
if a computer knows facts about who is a father, the request

ma patfu zi'o

will spew out a list of known fathers, whether or not their children's
identities are known, whereas

ma patfu [zo'e]

will implicitly restrict attention to fathers of known children.
Or at least that's one way to do it.

-- 
John Cowan [email-masked]
C'est la` pourtant que se livre le sens du dire, de ce que, s'y conjuguant
le nyania qui bruit des sexes en compagnie, il supplee a ce qu'entre eux,
de rapport nyait pas. -- Jacques Lacan, "L'Etourdit"