Subject: RE: [lojban] {kai'i}

From: "And Rosta" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2001 02:32:38 +0100

John:
> And Rosta scripsit:
> 
> > My view is that truthconditionally, zo'e ought to strictly mean nothing 
> > but "su'o da", with maximally narrow scope. Stronger claims can be inferred
> > pragmatically.
> 
> Oho. I'll have to refurbish my horribly logical positivist contempt for
> the semantics-pragmatics distinction.

I have a dim sense that you're quoting me here... I don't actually
remember having described your contempt as horribly logical positivist,
but certainly that exactly captures my sentiment! I find contempt for
the semantics-pragmatics distinction as incomprehensible as I find
belief in god and the supernatural. That is, they strike me as
fundamentally insane. (Mad, I mean; not insanitary.)

> ("the yeomen, who were always polishing up their brightly colored yeos
> for some idiotic festival or other" -- _Bored of the Rings_)

Are there some people blessed with the gift of discerning the
pertinence of your quotations, as opposed to merely appreciating their
quirky charm?

> > Not a good enough argument to motivate new cmavo, though. If someone
> > proposes a new cmavo to say something that can already be said in a 
> > different way, then people will tend to reject the new cmavo.
> 
> Granted, but remember the history: ka old, du'u new, ce'u fire-new.
> We introduced du'u because nu was being overloaded; we introduced
> ce'u because I finally realized what ka was all about.

I do remember the history. But when Xod said that ka is redundant, and
you replied that redundancy is Good Thing, a better response would
have been that Xod is right and that of course there are redundancies,
given the gradual way the language was made and the way we are still
in the process of coming to understand it.

--And.