From a.rosta@ntlworld.com Mon Aug 13 18:16:19 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: a.rosta@ntlworld.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_3_1); 14 Aug 2001 01:16:19 -0000 Received: (qmail 54259 invoked from network); 14 Aug 2001 01:16:16 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by l7.egroups.com with QMQP; 14 Aug 2001 01:16:16 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mta05-svc.ntlworld.com) (62.253.162.45) by mta3 with SMTP; 14 Aug 2001 01:16:16 -0000 Received: from andrew ([62.255.40.56]) by mta05-svc.ntlworld.com (InterMail vM.4.01.03.00 201-229-121) with SMTP id <20010814011614.MSLS20588.mta05-svc.ntlworld.com@andrew> for ; Tue, 14 Aug 2001 02:16:14 +0100 To: "Lojban@Yahoogroups. Com" Subject: RE: [lojban] Re: Well I guess you do learn something new every day... Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 02:14:33 +0100 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Importance: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20010810175224.00cf9ab0@pop.cais.com> From: "And Rosta" Lojbab: > At 02:11 AM 8/10/01 +0100, And Rosta wrote: > >Lojbab: > >I wouldn't expect spoken formal predicate logic to be verbose. And I would > >further expect an elaborated spoken formal predicate logic to include > >abbreviating shortcuts that complicate the austerely simple grammar of > >pred.log. but make sentences shorter. > > Neither JCB nor LLG ever tried to tackle to problem from that > standpoint. So whatever one means by the claim that Lojban is "logical", > we were not trying to find a short sentence version of predicate logic. I know. But accordingly we can't conclude that spoken predicate logic is either unspeakable or necessarily verbose. > > > A self-referential definition is not a definition. > > > >Yes it is. Deixis, for example, is all self-referentially defined. > > And we have specific and distinct words to indicate deixis. I don't see how that supports your claim. But never mind. > >There is nothing meaningless about defining the semantics of nei/no'a > >in terms of its syntactic configuration. > > > > > > > And what does "nei" convey that co'e would not? > > > > > > > >The meaning of nei is precide > > > > > > Yeah? As you define it, it means "precisely" nothing, since it is an > > > anaphora for itself. > > > >NO, it's an anaphor to the bridi it occurs in. Since nei is not the > >bridi it occurs in, nei is not an anaphor for itself. > > > >It's incredible that you are making such objections about this. If > >I give you a sentence like "ko'a djuno le du'u ko'a broda le nei", > >and I ask you "Which bridi does {nei} occur in, you have no > >trouble answering "lu ko'e broda le nei li'u". Likewise, if I > >ask you which bridi contains this, again you, despite your protestations > >to the contrary, can identify it as lu ko'a djuno le du'u ko'a broda le > >nei li'u. And if I ask you to identify, say, the x1 sumti of that > >bridi, then, again, you can identify it as lu ko'a li'u. > > Yes, but the example sentence we were dealing with was > >Pragmatically, in a bare "mi djuno ledu'u nei" I would not consider the nei > >to be self representing, so the "current bridi" has to be "djuno", and no'a > >refers outward from djuno, as ra refers backwards from whatever ri is > >pragmatically determined to mean. > > and the question I address there is whether "nei" in "le du'u nei" > represents itself or the bridi which djuno is the selbri of. The prior > example I was responding to was an instance of le du'u no'a. If nei > represents djuno, then no'a would have to go out one level from the > referent of nei. I know you were saying this. But I then counterproposed a different definition and interpretation of nei and no'a, which you then went on to criticize for not very sound reasons. I wish I knew how to terminate these Lojbab--And threads sooner. When it is apparent that another futile exchange is underway, I don't know whether etiquette requires that I reply in full, or reply by simply saying that I disagree but think that a full reply would be futile, or that I not reply at all. --And.