Re: Quine text

["Mark E. Shoulson" <cbmvax!uunet!CTR.COLUMBIA.EDU!shoulson>]

Dave@PRC.Unisys.COM writes in response to a comment I made in response to
Nick's ramblings on the Quine text.  Unfortunately, he accidentally sent it
to me and not the list, and has asked me to forward it, so here it comes:

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Date: Tue, 31 Mar 92 12:07:39 EST
From: dave@PRC.Unisys.COM
To: shoulson@ctr.columbia.edu
Subject: Re: Quine text


> By that reasoning, {loi remna cu morsi} would work well for "Man is mortal"
> (would {lo'e remna} be better?), and {lo'i remna noroi morsi} would work
> for "Man is immortal" (i.e. the human race as an entity).

Gosh, I hope this is wrong.

It's good that Lojban makes a distinction between "mass" and
"collective" (though these don't seem like great terms to use). This
is a useful distinction to make if one is trying to be clear.

However, problems arise when similar words can be used in the same
context with different meanings. In spoken English I find "can" and
"can't" to be the worst offenders [as in "I cang go with you"]. In
written English "now" and "not" are problematical ["We are now/not
ready."] because, though apparently clear and unambiguous, each word
is easy to mistype as the other.

My Lojban is still very very weak, but it sounds from what mark says
as though {loi}, {lo'i}, and {lo'e} can all be used in identical
contexts, with different meanings. These sound very much alike,
particularly the first two. I should think that someone who has
learned to type these words would also tend to type one for another.

If these similar-sounding words can be used in the same context, this
would be a Bad Thing. It's OK for completely different words to sound
alike (such as "hungry" and "Hungary"), because they don't occur in
similar contexts; it's not OK for words that are used in identical
contexts to sound alike.

Comments?

  --dave