Re: local units, species hierarchy

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

mi'e djan. .i la lojbab. cusku di'e

> On the basis of this argument, I would accept that any subunit places
> should follow the standard place, moving the latter to x3.  There
> certainly need not be something special about two levels of unit/subunit
> (though it does seem that at least in English measurements we seldom
> specify more than two even when there exist more.

If we don't drop the subunit place, I would agree with this switch.

> If people want this change, I will change all five local unit gismu
> identically.

Good.  I also want to still argue for a sixth local subunit, "degree (local
angle unit)".  Unlike feet, miles, degrees Fahrenheit, gallons, acres, and
the rest, angular degrees are vital to all kinds of scientific purposes.
Even though the radian is the SI unit, it has never been accepted as the
practical scientific unit in the same way as the meter, the kilogram, the
second, and so on.  Astronomy depends on degrees, as does geography, as
does navigation.  Countries that are fully SI-ified in daily life still
talk of 90 degree angles, not $\pi / 2$ radian angles.

Alternatively, degrees need a really compelling lujvo.  No fu'ivla will
cut it, nor will anything based on {semto}: the historical origin of
degrees is no more interesting than that of hours, minutes, etc.
Indeed, the existence of these is another argument from analogy: Lojban
doesn't compel people to talk of kiloseconds (about 15 min), megaseconds
(2 weeks), or gigaseconds (30 years), nor to make use of a generalized
"local time unit" to cover weeks, months, and years alike.  We have gismu
for the non-SI time units, and rightly so, for the whole world uses them.

> [Y]ou know no more about the semantics of the subunit place under this
> scheme [i.e. using "pi'e" in the x2 place]
>        than you do under the status quo.  All you know is that there are
> some kind of units, and some kind of subunits, and the pi'e suggests
> that the number of subunits in one unit is not the current base
> (typically 10).  You would be better to argue for the subunit side of
> the pi'e to be expressed as a fraction with denominator equal to the
> conversion factor.  Then at least you would recapture some missing but
> useful semantics.  Of course, people don't do that in everyday language,
> but it would be clearer.

It now seems to me that one purpose for the "by standard" place is to
explain the significance of the subunit place(s) or (by the same token) of the
compound number in the x2 place.  So I think that this argument proves nothing.

> I think the norm in modern English (or at least American) usage given
> miles and subunits is for teh subunits to be either yards or feet, not
> furlongs.  So you stand the risk under either method of having the
> number interpreted as 1 mile and 2 feet.

True.

> We DO have the option of creating lujvo for the various combinations
> that are most used and useful, specifying EXACTLY which subunits are
> applicable.  A merkyxirmyjivnyminli (American-horse-compete-"mile")
> would be miles and furlongs, while some other lujvo might be defined as
> miles and feet.

This is tantamount to filling the x4 place with "lo'e merki xrima jivni".

==============

(my example preserved for clarity)

> >1)      la'o .ly. Homo sapiens .ly. cu jutsi
> >                la'o .ly. Homo .ly.
> >                la'o .ly. Hominidae .ly.
> >                la'o .ly. Primates .ly.
> >                la'o .ly. Mammalia .ly.
> >                la'o .ly. Chordata .ly.
> >                la'o .ly. Animalia .ly.

> They are vague [i.e conversions of "jutsi]
>                but you know one thing of import:  that each succeeding
> place is a higher level in the hierarchy.  It would NOT be valid to say
>
> 1a)      la'o .ly. Homo sapiens .ly. cu jutsi
>                 la'o .ly. Animalia .ly.
>                 la'o .ly. Homo .ly.
>                 la'o .ly. Mammalia .ly.
>                 la'o .ly. Chordata .ly.
>                 la'o .ly. Hominidae .ly.
>                 la'o .ly. Primates .ly.
>
> since that doesn't matche the hierarchical order of the categories.

No argument here.

> I will agree that le xe jutsi is relatively meaningless without all more
> detailed branches of the tree specified (i.e. se and te and ve).

In that case, you find it hard to refer to "a family" (lo te jutsi) or
"a phylum" (lo sexixa jutsi), or to say things like:

2)      la'o ly. Homo sapiens .ly. cu jutsi faxixa la'o ly. Chordata .ly.
        Homo sapiens belongs to phylum Chordata.

which are very ordinary statements in biological discourse.  Against this,
you could argue that "belongs to order" and "belongs to phylum" should be
specific le'avla, but then you need a lot of them to avoid errors of
coordination: Example 2 is not really parallel to:

3)      fe la'o ly. Homo .ly. cu jutsi faxixa la'o ly. Chordata .ly.
        Genus Homo belongs to phylum Chordata.

The relation between species and phylum is not really the same as that
between genus and phylum, or species and genus and phylum, or order and
phylum and kingdom, or ...  Pretty soon, "jutsi" starts to become synonymous
with "klesi".

> Note also that in this case you don't have the option of "pi'e".  I'm
> not sure there's a practical alternative even if we agreed that there
> was a problem to be solved.  To express it all in one "name" doesn't
> even give an indication of which portion of the name is the more
> detailed part of the tree (unless maybe the morphology of the words
> tells you, and I doubt that most scientists, much less the general
> public, knows the morphological forms needed to make this informative.

Actually, I think that biologists get a pretty good sense for this.
Families tend to end in "-idae" and phyla in "-ata" or "-phyta", for
instance.

> Normal scientific usage of course, is backwards from our scheme, with
> the genus followed by species followed by subspecies.

This is not really what happens: the "Homo" in "Homo sapiens" is just as
much part of the species name as the "sapiens".  It's easy to think that
because the first part of a species name is always the same as the genus
name, that it is somehow redundant, and the second word is the >real<
species name.  In fact, the second word is properly called the "specific
epithet", and by itself it need not be unique (although I cannot turn up
any examples offhand -- I'm no biologist).

> But this leaves
> no room for omitting the genus and including the subspecies, or talking
> at higher levels of the hierarchy than the genus level.

As for subspecies, they are optional categories, and some biologists
condemn them as an attempt to straitjacket what is really a far more complex
system of variation and covariation.  You cannot, in a name, "omit the genus
and include the subspecies", for the genus is not present: what is present
is the first word of the species name, which by convention always corresponds
with the genus name.  ("Generic name" would be the correct usage, but probably
too confusing to this audience, so I am using "genus name" throughout.)
Indeed, in a subspecies name, the genus and species are not present:
a subspecies has a three-word name, where the first two words always
correspond by convention to the species name.

> Thus we end up
> looking like time-of-day (tcika) or dates (detri) which have similar
> need to work at differing levels but without the capability to use
> numbers separated by pi'e.  So you end up having to use sumti joined by
> joi, or ce'o with the whole surrounded by mass brackets.  Yecch!

Oh, I don't know.  The "la'o ly. li'osa'a .ly." clutter is what's really
ugly, but unavoidable.  (Some day we ought to update JCB's scheme for
pronouncing Linnaean names in Lojban: there is a system for pronouncing
the names in each natural language, though of course only the written form
is internationally agreed-upon, and Lojban should have one too.)

> How do you know that a time "03:54" is hours and minutes, or minutes and
> seconds?  Convention coupled with context.  How will you know what the
> places are in a species name?  Convention coupled with context.  I like
> the separate places version better than the single place version since
> it has more flexibility, and the capability doesn't exclude the use of
> the single place technique.  You CAN say "minli be li cipi'evo as easily
> as minli be li ci bei li vo (no Zipfean advantage either way - 2
> syllables however you do it)).

I don't agree, although I don't have a firm alternative in mind either.
Comments?

--
John Cowan              sharing account <lojbab@access.digex.net> for now