Lojban duplications

[cbmvax!uunet!pucc.princeton.edu!bob]

       Until Lojban Central issues a directive to the contrary, I
   want you all to know that when I leave a place empty I make no
   claim about that empty place except that I saw no reason to
   include it.  You are not free to assume that there is even some
   unnamed thing in that place.

   When I say:
           mi klama
   I am not even admitting to having a destination!

Wait a minute!  You are missing the point of a predicate language!
The  idea is that `klama' is word that means you are talking about
some relationship among a traveler, a destination, a departure point,
a route and a means.  The word says you are making a veridical claim
of some sort about a relationship among those five entities.  You may
be making an incomplete claim, but that is a different issue.  (It
may not matter that the claim is incomplete--whether it matters is a
different issue.)

If you want to talk about a traveler without making any claim about
destination, then you need a different word, one that only talks about
traveling.  Maybe lojban does not have a gismu for this.  Two
possibilities for the case that lojban lacks a gismu:

    * The dictionary makers made a mistake.

    * You have to invent a tanru that restricts the notion of
      <traveler> <destination> <departure> <route> <means>
      to just the first of those entities.

I think it is interesting to attempt to work within the constraints of
the second possibility.  I don't know if you or I can, but it is an
experiment.

The reason I think it is interesting is that I agree with the idea
that there should be a gismu relating

      <traveler> <destination> <departure> <route> <means>

I think that that five part relationship really is a powerful notion,
more powerful than the one part relationship of <traveler>.  (My
reason for liking `klama' may not be the designers reason, but it
suffices for me.)

If I want to specify the one part relationship of <traveler>, I feel I
should say that I don't know anything about destination, route, etc.
I think the five part relationship really is more basic and the every
traveller, by the very notion of traveling, has a relationship to
known or unknown, expressed or unexpressed among:

    <destination> <departure> <route> <means>


As you say:

   Obviously I will wind up somewhere, but that is not to say that
   that final destination was my intention when I began or even that I
   had an intended destination or if I had some intended destination,
   that I ever reached it.

I think your sentence expresses what I mean.  `Obviously'.  Well, if
it is obvious that I will end up somewhere, then the concept of
`klama' includes <destination> whether you want it to or not.


Whether you think that <destination> is important or unimportant,
known ahead of time or not,  should be expressed or not---these are
different issues.

   "mi klama" can stand as is even though there is a
   lot of unarticulated information.  I hope not to associate with
   any fool that imagines providing an origin, a destination, a route,
   and a means to "mi klama" will express all there is to know
   about the event.

This is a red herring.  A veridical claim about

      <traveler> <destination> <departure> <route> <means>

does not claim to express *all* there is to know about the
event/process.

What this definition of `klama' does suggest is that somehow you
cannot imagine a <route> unless you admit the *possibility* of a
<destination>.  Of course, this suggestion is a Worf-Sapir type of
suggestion....but that is part of the attraction of experimenting with
lojban.  Can you or I become fluent thinkers such that we find it hard
to forget the various aspects of `klama', even in the many
circumstances when some of them don't matter or we don't care to
express or even think them?

    Robert J. Chassell               bob@gnu.ai.mit.edu
    Rattlesnake Mountain Road        (413) 298-4725 or (617) 253-8568 or
    Stockbridge, MA 01262-0693 USA   (617) 876-3296 (for messages)