Subject: Re: Literal and Metaphor (was: pages)

From: Nick Nicholas <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 03:13:44 -0700

cu'u la xod.

>> More to the point, perhaps, a book is a unitary entity, and the Web is
>> anything but.

>The Bible was written by many authors spanning centuries, yet we think of
>it as a whole because it's all bound in one cover.

Yup; coherent(ish) whole, running narrative, regarded as a unitary entity
of reading material by lots of people. I think it passes...

>If an encyclopedia is a cukta,

Maaaaybe it is...

>so is the web.

Well, you know I don't agree, so...

>More generally, how far can we get if we insist upon the most restrictive
>interpretations possible? That's all good in English, with zillions of
>words and more each year. In Lojban we only have a handful of gismu, and
>we have to squeeze an awful lot of mileage out of them!

Real languages work with prototypes. "War and Peace" is a prototypical
book. The Bible less so, the Encyclopaedia Britannica even less so (who'd
call it a book in English, after all? And I'm talking about English 'book'
now, not Lojban {cukta}); the Web --- pretty marginal, as 'books' go.

Lojban doesn't do prototype semantics. More fool it, sure, but after all,
we did sign on for a logical language. (This bears emphasising.) So Lojban
would *like* you to be able to say categorically that something is or isn't
a {cukta}. It might not be possible; but it's desirable; if it's good for
{botpi} (though I think the whole bottle-requires-lid thing is wrong ---
but that's by the by), then it's just as good for {cukta}.

It *absolutely* is correct to keep gismu meanings broad. There's a big
song-and-dance about jgita = violin in Lesson 7, which I put in for that
very reason. If we claim gismu blanket semantic space (as John and I have
just redone in the Brochure), then gismu meanings *must* be broad.

But it also makes sense to keep gismu senses distinct from each other,
where feasible. If it didn't, there'd be no reason to have {litru} distinct
from {klama}, after all. And that's something that has always been made a
song-and-dance about in Lojban paedagogy, too.

Now:

se papri < cukta < se tcidu < datni

Things with pages (physical books) are a subset of books
Books are a subset of texts
Texts are a subset of data

I think the Web is a {se tcidu}. I don't think it is a {cukta}. I think the
distinction is important.

>The x3 place means to me that somebody (presumably a prenu?) must have
>authored the cukta, as opposed to, perhaps, calling a cloud or a string of
>DNA a cukta. Still, since it didn't SAY x3 had to be a prenu, I can stick
>"nature" or "randomness" in there. A cukta is absolutely anything when I
>consider it from the cukta perspective, sticking credible values, or zi'o,
>into the places.

You can use gismu Humpty-Dumpty style if you wish. I am likewise free to
misunderstand you or disagree with you on its applicability. This is not
the real issue, because I (Nick) already know you've proposed {balcukta}
for Web, so anything I say is coloured by that; fine, I have an axe to
grind, and a counterproposal.

The issue is, rather, is this a good lujvo for Web, *for people other than
you and me*? If someone sees {balcukta}, will they be able to tell, without
looking it up, that it means the Web? And is that recognisability a proper
or valid criterion for whether something is a good lujvo or not? Will they
remember it, once they have seen it? Will they rankle against it -- just
like Jay the other day objected to {selma'o} for 'lexeme' on the Wiki? Is
{jordatnymu'e} any better? Is {samclupa}? Is {skamrxuebe}? Is {la'ogy. WWW
gy.}?

Those issues will get decided by the community, as we both have agreed.
You've made your proposal, I've made mine. Others will likely make others.
It may be that one prevails. It may well instead end up like Esperanto, a
language in which I once had a half-hour conversation where I only used the
word "komputilo" for 'computer', and my interlocutor only used "komputero",
with neither of us yielding an inch. (In other words, you say tomayto, I
say tomahto.) It may end up in schism, it may end up in a ukase, it may end
up with a new gismu, it may end up with us sharing a beverage of our mutual
choice in a year's time, laughing about the folly of it. But in my opinion,
it's out of our hands now; and I want to avoid the primordial Lojbanist sin
of making the same arguments over and over.

That's one thing. The other thing is the issue of what do gismu mean. To
me, if you have to use {zi'o}, that indicates something is wrong --- and
likely, that you should be picking another gismu. Likewise if you ignore
the presuppositions of the gismu list, including that author x3s are
animate rational agents, authoring purposefully and not epiphemomenally or
randomly. (These are presuppositions built into the English word 'author',
I contend. It doesn't *say* you have to put in a {prenu} as x3, but it very
strongly implies it.) If your thingummy is written by nature, or
randomness, or zi'o, I claim it's not a {cukta} (as I understand it at
least), but a {se tcidu}; and my impression is that this is standard
thinking in Lojban. Again: natural languages don't work like this; they
admit shades of grey, prototypes, exceptions, etc. But that is not what I
understand Lojban to be.

I may be wrong; wouldn't be the first time. :-) You can absolutely work
against that attitude. You can also absolutely say that the hardliners will
be vanquished by language reality; and I'm inclined to agree with you. The
community may well end up siding with the pragmaticists over the hardliners
in this issue, and many others; that's the game we've all signed up for.
But I'm left with a question and a statement.

The question is And's: Why Lojban, then? If you do object to Lojban's
finickiness in the semantics of gismu (the binary opposition thing, at
least), then I conclude that the semantic finickiness is not what has
attracted you to Lojban. If I am right (and I may well be grievously
misconstruing you, which I can only regret), then what is it about Lojban
that you like, and cannot already find in a natural language (or
Esperanto)? I'm not trying to be cute; I'm honestly confused here.

The statement is, of course, in Lojban.

.i le logji smuske xanru; noi cu'uku lojdarlu po'o; cu ji'a cmima le'i lojbo
.i mi ji'a go'i .i da joi mi ji'a jdice

***

ni'o mi na nelci lenu mi darlu .i do pu lifri la'edi'u
.i mi zgana ku'i lenu mi ce do simfrica leka ce'u jimpe ledu'u le bangu cu
mokau
.i mi na birti tu'a le jalge be la'edi'u
.i ku'i mi co'a xanku tu'a leka le bangu cu ba stodi

ni'o mi puzi pilno zo ce'u .i mi cabdei jai banzu fai lenu mi tavla tu'a zo
ce'u
.i mi ji'a na birti ledu'u mi djica lenu rere'u tavla
.i ku'i mi ba stidi la'a lenu casnu su'o cuntu poi pu se tavla ku'o fa le
mriste lojbo ji'a
.i gonai smuske srera fa tu'a lu ce'u no'u mi li'u; gi le velcli ba .ei se
galfi

.i mi pendo rinsa fe'omi'e nitcion.

Nick Nicholas, TLG, UCI, USA. [email-masked] www.opoudjis.net
"Most Byzantine historians felt they knew enough to use the optatives
correctly; some of them were right." --- Harry Turtledove.