Saddam T-shirts

[cbmvax!uunet!ee.mu.oz.au!nsn]

Before I go on, I'd like to tell you all that, lengthly edicts from people
with accounts on snark notwithstanding %^), I am finding this forum lively,
interesting, instructive, and damn cool. What worries me is that I might
be alone in this, and that the lurkers are not having that much fun at all.
I dunno, maybe we should have a survey or something. 

Anyway, to {la saDAM. galfi}/ {lenu la saDAM. broda cu galfi}:

Message-Id:  <9106041330.aa19944@COR4.PICA.ARMY.MIL>
Quoth Art:

>Thus I find Nick's argument terribly
>flawed when he sites what seems to be the definition in question
>as part of the proof of his position.

Dumb, ain't it. Well, it's semantics. That's my excuse %^)
Seriously, any semantics you choose is bound to constrain thought - or at
least bias it. A lot of the semantics out there assumes causality, for example.
With a Zipfeanly longer expression, you can obviate this, just as you can
obviate uncleft strcture by a {fi'o rinka gasnu}. But the place structure
that's defaulted into, the one reprsented with FA, should be the more
convenient one to use. Now in the original structure, we have:
x1: the causing agent. x3: the causing action. The two are merged by:

nsn> and the definition is that the guy who acts the action which
nsn> modifies is the guy who does the modifying itself.

And the uncleft structure claims, quite boldly, that it's not people that
change things, but events. Our friend in Baghdad does not change anything
by sitting around existing; he does not change anything by an action of our
friend Al-Sabah, or an action of his troops if he has nothing to do with it.
If someone modifies, then someone does something which modifies. It is claimed
that one always has to DO something (including arrange for something to happen)
for change to take place. In this light, x1 is superfluous, as it is contained
pleonastically in x3.

>I find that in the real world there are usually a great many
>causes for each effect and a good many effects to which each
>cause contributes.  

Yeah. That's a problem which is not resolved by cleft/uncleft. It can be
said that

Saddam modifies the borders by Saddam having the troops invade

and that

The troops modify the borders by their invading.

your phrase

Saddam modifies by his troops' invading.

adds nothing to the above possibilities; it IS nonsense, not just ellipsis,
in lojban.

>If we are using the most shallow definition
>that Nick supports, then it seems like we don't even need that
>word at all.  Paint-spreading obviously modifies things so
>why do we need to say that I modify the wall when we are already
>saying that I paint spread red paint on the blue wall.

This is silly. Sure, you don't need to say it in that context. And because
the modifying action is contained in x3 of the old structure, cleft/uncleft
has no bearing on this. In this context, the word galfi is redundant. Now
spread some blue paint on the blue wall. Is the wall modified? The word
means, not that an action has taken place, but that the action has made a
difference. Having a place for an actor or not has nothing to do with it.

>And I miss the whole point of 
>> ... if the soldiers invaded Kuwait unbidden, or indeed despite him,
>> Art's statement would be invalid, ...

You obviously do. The lojbani, who can presuppose nothing, will ask of your
sentence:

"well gee, if the soldiers did the invading, what did Saddam have to do with
modifying the borders?"

There can be formulated many causes and effects for such a modification.
Each involves an action. Each action in turn involves an actor. Your sentnce
mixes the actor of one with the action of the other. Nothing wrong with it
in an NL, but I don't think this is the most unambiguous place structure we
can come up with. And I don't think this definition of galfi is all that
restrictive. It's just more specific.

And I think this interest in 'actor' is glossocentric.

How come there isn't more debate on place structures anyway? Oh, I forgot:
we don't have the current ones. *sigh*

Nick.