Subject: Re: [lojban] RE:literalism

From: Invent Yourself <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2000 17:57:31 -0400 (EDT)

On Thu, 19 Oct 2000 [email-masked] wrote:

> xod:
> <<Enamored with grammatic unambiguity, jboka'e also often reach for semantic
> unambiguity. But while the former can be proven with yacc rules, the
> latter is and always will be completely subjective. And in subjectivity,
> the shortest distance is often a rambling line, not a straight one.>>
> It isn't even unambiguity (any way to get there is an unambiguous as another, 
> once you get there), but a predetermined notion of what means are appropriate 
> for forming compounds -- and tanru (against xod's later remark that thse 
> somehow are to be dealt with differently). 

Do you dispute that? I didn't know the notion (that a lujvo selects one of
the many possible interpretations of a tanru) was 
controversial. Lujvo-making loses information. Sometimes it's not worth
it. I propose that "rapist" is such a case. 

Anyway, I think we are saying the same thing. My point is that folks are
attempting to achieve semantic unambiguity, and that sounds to them like
it suggests a certain method: the straightest line. However, semantic
unambiguity doesn't work like that. We need concrete examples, so I will
invoke my tanru of "mucti minji" which means software. I think it
expresses the concept clearly and concisely yet it violates the "straight
line" aesthetic since it doesn't even contain "skami"!

There is an other-language quality to such tanru which is not present
with straight-line tanru. That quality, seeing the world a different way,
I find to be more Lojbanic (more Sapir-Whorf) than the alternative, which
invokes the spirit of a markup language. Personally, I came to Lojban for
Sapir-Whorf effects and not for the yacc-parsable geek-code aspect.

-----
It takes a lot of work to realize how little work it takes 
to achieve Slack.