Subject: RE: why no postings? II

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 16:44:40 EDT

more not quite records:
The search for names of characters produced a long list, with some 
controversies. the main issues were whether the character should be named 
per se or whether it was the function that was important. Both views were 
well represented, but the cross cases -- one form, several function ("-") 
and one function, several forms (exponentiation) were unresolved. There was 
some movement in the direction that characters (-{bo}) should be by form and 
that function strictly belonged in MEX or some metalanguage. But many 
functions had nowhere to go naturally. The other question was about the 
scope of {bo}, whether and how it could bind to complex items, as needed for 
many cases -- both of form and of function.

The idea of devising "computer Lojban" (or "Lojban computer") stalled on two 
issues. 1) What is the grammar of familiar computer words. like "Edit" or 
"File" or "Select"? Many look like verbs (imperatives, perhaps), some seem 
clearly nouns, and others intermediate -- gerunds, say. These lead to a 
variety of suggested forms -- as does the issue of details, is it {sidju} or 
{se sidju} or {nu sidju} if it is a verb. 
2) Ought we to devote time to jargon words at all when so many general 
purpose words are still lacking (cf. the huistory of TLI word formation). 
Shouldn't we rather be using fu'ivla (skamr-) to deal with these without 
eating too deeply into the Zipfy general purpose words space of lujvo?

I am inclined to think that the empty-bottle problem is solved in a two-fold 
way, except that some people dislike each (and a few both) of the solutions.
1) While {ta botpi noda} entails {ta na botpi}, it implicates in a good 
Gricean way that ta fails to be a botpi ONLY (or, at least primarily -- is 
supect it lacks a cap, too) in lacking a content. Thus the first gives more 
information than the latter and so, while the entailment can be reversed, 
doing so ends up with a very different meaning for the first sentence. 
2) The use of {zi'o} allows us to construct the new preidcate {botpi zi'o} 
that applies to every <xyz> such that {botpi} applies to <xwyz> and also to 
those <xyz> such that {botpi} does not apply precisely because there is no w 
to form the latter quad. 
Again, using {ta botpi zi'o} implicates (but does not entail) {ta botpi noda} 
and {ta na botpi} and stresses that what is missing is just content. 
I find form 1 more natural, but form 2 safer.

In spite of the arguments given, I still am unconvinced that the Lojban date 
order
DDMMYYHHMMSS.X... needs to be changed to the ISO standard. Languages for 
people often don't fit machines -- else why have programmers?

I would like to think (but don't) that all agree that the primary difference 
between {le} and {lo} (and the other e-o gadri pairs) is +/- specific and 
that the case where {le} (etc.) are no veridical is a (maybe Gricean) 
consequence of that difference (if you know WHO they are, what does it matter 
what they are called?). The same difference presumably carries over to 
{voi}-{poi}, but might not. If it doesn't, what is the difference in this 
latter case?

{za'o} continues to generate a lot of fun. Does it, when used as a tense, 
give a reference to the intended goal (natural stopping place) that is 
overshot, or to the actual stopping place, leaving the place o'ershot 
implicit? As a sumtitcita is is assumed to take the "natural stopping place" 
as argument. Then there is all the ingenuity devoted to defining its mirror 
image, starting too soon or too late, and thus using the implication (if even 
that) that the cessitive means stopping before the natural stopping place 
(even when there isn't one). All of this has been profitable in making the 
situations clearer, but none of it is yet decisive.