Subject: Re: [lojban] ma smuni zo senva

From: Jim Peters <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 12:27:45 +0100

Jay Kominek wrote:
> Maybe someone authoritative will clarify this for me, because its
> something I've been unsure of, but:
> 
> AFAIK, a lujvo's meaning is provided by a dictionary. Its components,
> however, should be chosen such that if you've never heard of the word,
> you'll at least have a clue as to what the speaker is talking about.

Yeah, sorry. I meant tanru.

> Both the person, and the water, are klama'ing.

`klama' seems to express the motion part, but not the nature of the
motion. Perhaps "sutra flecu klama" would be a better way to express
what I'm talking about, something that both a human and water could
equally do.

> In English they're both kinds of run, because 'run' is fairly vague word
> in English. A fact I remember to this day, (from my childhood) is that my
> parents' nice big (but still abridged!) dictionary provided something on
> the order of 40 definitions for the word 'run'.

Yeah, `run' says a lot.

> > Does this mean, then, that Lojban is biased towards a physical
> > world-view, making it much less useful for discussing more subtle
> > aspects of the world ? I mean, are word-meanings being defined in
> > such a way that chooses a concrete physical-scientific world-view over
> > a slightly more abstract one.
> 
> I think you need to be clear about what you mean by 'subtle aspects'. :)

I'm clear about it myself, but do you really want me to try and
explain it !? I'm using `subtle aspects' here to mean something like
the underlying nature or pattern that something is a part of, which is
not easily evident when looking at the world purely as a concrete
physical place.

It's like that human-running is a concrete example of
flowing-movement. Flowing-movement is the more subtle aspect, it is
much less concrete, and has many ways of being expressed concretely,
for example as running water.

We can have a useful discussion about `flowing-movement' without being
concrete about it at all. If the words genuinely reflect subtle
principles at work, then we can talk in that space without needing to
become concrete. However, as I understand `bajra', it is only useful
for the concrete example of the physical action of a human or animal
running. So I can't use it to discuss the more subtle aspect.

Sorry if this is not too clear. It probably all sounds like Tai Chi
talk. It's like a level of focus. Looking at a human runner in very
blurry-focus, we see flowing-motion. With more focus, we lose sight
of the fluidity, and see a human running (bajra). With even tighter
focus, we lose sight of human-running, and see shocks and tensions,
hear breath coming in and out, see muscles working, blood flowing,
chemicals being broken down, and so on.

Somehow if the words reflect subtle aspects, then this allows you to
say a lot at once - a kind of parallelism. From my very limited
knowledge, this my impression of how Chinese seems to work.

The point is that in selecting the meanings of words, you are choosing
the level of subtlety (and perhaps the world-view) that the language
is optimised for. Isn't this Sapir-Whorf in action ?

I was looking at Lojban as an expressive language, but there seems to
be something missing for me right at this moment. I think it's
because I need to get beneath all this logic and grammar and
word-definitions, and find the words themselves. In a native
language, the words don't exist as dictionary entries in your head -
rather they exist somehow as a compound of the experiences of all the
times they were used - like they have a semi-conscious feeling and
sense, and associations. This is also the more subtle aspect I'm
talking about.

It seems to me that it's at this stage that the language can be used
unconsciously and expressively. I guess this is the hard part in
kick-starting a new language - to build up those associations and
word-feelings amongst a small group of people starting from nothing.

Somehow once this stage is reached, the word is saying much more than
the dictionary definition (which is just a key to it, an
approximation).

I think if I ever become proficient at Lojban I should hopefully be
able to express myself using tanru, even if the gismu weren't really
designed for the some of the things I'd like to say.

We'll see how it goes -

Jim

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Jim Peters (_)/=\~/_(_) Uazú
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