response to John(lojbab) on sarcu

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

LL> mi'e djan. kau,n
LL> .i la lojbab cusku di'e
LL>
LL> > sarcu - JCB's 1975 equivalent appears to have a du'u (neither nu nor
LL> > object) defined for x1 (though he had no real way to express a du'u).
LL>
LL> I read L1 4th ed. pp 198-99 as meaning that JCB believes that all
LL> indirect statements are in fact event descriptions in Loglan.  This is
LL> a defensible position, but one which I believe leads to more
LL> confusions than it is worth.

I asked Nora about this in the few minutes I saw her today.  She thinks that
there is a difference in abstraction levels between a lenu and a ledu'u,
but that the language as designed does not and cannot easily be made to
distinguish between two levels of abstraction in everyday usage, even if
people were able to think about it clearly (which I can't).  There is already
enough difficulty in using a "le fasnu" which is an abstraction but doesn't
look like one, and a "le fatci" which is a second level abstraction but
doesn't look like one.  Lojban is the first language to even make sumti-
raising a significant concept in its surface structure, I suspect, but it may
be that we will need fluent Lojbanists who are comfortable with thinking in/
about levels of abstraction to design a second-order Lojban that can make the
distinctions implicitly.

Note that Colin often says that Lojban makes the distinction between sets,
masses, and individuals mandatory.  By the above reasoning this is also
not true.  "le se cmima" is a set, but doesn't look like one, and "le gunma"
is a mass and doesn't look like one.  Too much of these distinctions is
tied up in the the too-unsystematic, too idiosyncratic, and unbaselined and
continuously evolving place structures.

Thus I will not push for an explicit or mandatory distinction between du'u
and nu levels of abstraction in usage, even if there probably is one.  This
will undoubtedly lead to some abstraction level confusion in the case of
words like sarcu.

I disagree with JCB as John reads him that all indirect statements are events,
since we CAN and DO make distinctions between events, and events occurring
But I suspect that we can live with some degree of muddying where it will
occur, just as we live with the results when people forget to mark sumti-raising
in their Lojban.  (Whether the computer will be able to live with it, is
less clear).

lojbab