From a.rosta@dtn.ntl.com Fri Aug 17 23:26:03 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: a.rosta@dtn.ntl.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_3_1); 18 Aug 2001 06:26:03 -0000 Received: (qmail 74658 invoked from network); 18 Aug 2001 06:26:03 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by l10.egroups.com with QMQP; 18 Aug 2001 06:26:03 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mta05-svc.ntlworld.com) (62.253.162.45) by mta1 with SMTP; 18 Aug 2001 06:26:03 -0000 Received: from andrew ([62.255.41.57]) by mta05-svc.ntlworld.com (InterMail vM.4.01.03.00 201-229-121) with SMTP id <20010818062601.ELLG20588.mta05-svc.ntlworld.com@andrew> for ; Sat, 18 Aug 2001 07:26:01 +0100 Reply-To: To: Subject: RE: [lojban] Re: Literal and Metaphor (was: pages) Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2001 07:22:18 +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) In-Reply-To: Importance: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 From: "And Rosta" Nick: > Lojban doesn't do prototype semantics. More fool it, sure, but after all, > we did sign on for a logical language. (This bears emphasising.) I remember you used to say this a lot in the years before you became inactive. And as before, I don't really agree. Here are 3 things that could count as prototype semantics. 1. Categories defined by criterial features, but speakers describe X as belonging to category Y so long as X comes relevantly close to belonging to category Y, even if X does not strictly speaking belong to Y. Lojban can handle this. A logical language does not renounce Gricean pragmatics. 2. Categories defined by prototypical member. There is no reason why this can't happen in Lojban, for some or all predicates. The only constraint is the nonnegotiability of place-structures (so however typical a bottle this is, it's not a botpi if it is lidless). 3. Categories defined either way, but membership held to be a gradient property. Various forms of fuzzy or gradient truth values could handle this & it would probably be very Lojbanic. > {botpi} (though I think the whole bottle-requires-lid thing is wrong --- Someone or other, maybe Lojbab, pointed out that {botpi} means "sealable container", rather than "bottle". As with "guitar"/{jgita}, keywords can be more of a hindrance than a help. > 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. But herein is part of the problem. People seem to feel the need to use a gismu, even if there is no appropriate gismu, or even if the least inappropriate gismu has the wrong place structure for one's needs. Better to say "pick another brivla". --And.