Re: Lean Lujvo and fat gismu

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

The following text was sent in private mail to lojbab.  The author
(I have removed identifying marks) indicates that he wishes to bring the
matter before the group only if someone else agrees with him.  Since
I overheard (oversaw?) this message, and I agree with at least some of it,
I am posting it in part, along with my responses.

> ... [I contend] that "klama" [does] not require that
> the goer have a destination.  That there [is] no need for any other
> word with fewer places.  That "klama" with places unfilled [is]
> no different than another word that lacked the unfilled places....

I think that there is a difference, but it is a very subtle one.  To say

1)      mi klama fi le frasygu'e
        I come from France

does not imply that there is a specific destination.  What it does do,
by eliding the x2, x4, and x5 places, is to argue that it is MEANINGFUL
to talk of a destination, a route, and a means of transport in this
particular case (which I will call an >instance< of the selbri "klama").
If there were no destination whatsoever, "klama" would not be correct.
However, the following form would then be suitable:

2)      mi cliva le frasygu'e
        I leave France.

The difference between "klama" and "cliva" is that using the former commits
the speaker to there being a MEANINGFUL ANSWER to the question "Where did
you go?"  Using "cliva", the speaker is not committed to the existence of
such a meaningful answer.  This state of affairs is not be confused with
being committed to the NON-EXISTENCE of a meaningful answer.

The new place-structure-removing cmavo "zi'o" has the same "not committed"
semantics.  When we remove a place, we create a more general predicate
which applies to all the same instances as before, and MAY also apply to
some new instances (the ones, if any, where there is no meaningful value
for the place).  Lojban has no easy mechanism for denying that a place has a
meaningful value (in a particular case), except to compound two claims:

3)      mi cliva le frasygu'e de di gi'enai klama da
                le frasygu'e de di
        I leave France by-some-route by-some-means and-don't go somewhere
                from France by-that-route by-that-means.

Note the careful use of "da", "de", "di" to fill and link places explicitly,
thus making logical reasoning possible.

If (and this is the key point) I merely left those places blank, no such
logical inferences could be made.  For nothing can be said about an unfilled
place (except the bare statement that it's meaningful to talk of something
or other which might occupy it): it may be specific or nonspecific, simple
or complex, or even nonexistent ("noda"), if the context warrants such an
assumption.  Conjoined statements may be split up and assigned different
values for each empty place:  "mi .e do klama" may mean that I go to England
from France, whereas you go to New York from Melbourne.

>     lojbab says:
>
> > Thus the person who proposes the lujvo "gerkyzdani" has to decide just
> > which concept they want to represent:
> >
> > x1 is a doghouse of/for dogs x2 of species/breed x3
> > x1 is a house of/for dogs x2
> > x1 is a doghouse of/for dogs of species/breed x2
> > x1 is a house of/for dogs
> >
> > All are plausible, and each of the above in succession is a bit more
> > general than the previous one; i.e. there will exist some slightly
> > broader category of things x1 that will fit the predicate (given
> > specific values for any other places.
> >
> > Which one is "correct?"  That has to be decided by the person who
> > proposes or uses the lujvo.  Each is a slightly different concept,
> > as is implied by the existence of different sets of values which
> > could meet each description.
>
> Rather than lean gismu or fat lujvo, I argue for weaking place
> structure.  That each successive place of the word is weaker in
> its tie to the concept.
>     For example: 'going' is central to 'klama'.  A goer
> is the closest likely relation to going, thus X1 is for the goer.
> A destination is next closest/most-likely relation to going, thus
> X2 is the destination.  At some point things related to going are
> sufficiently unlikely to be spoken of and/or sufficiently remotely
> connected to the action that we rely on the modifier words to
> attach places to connect them, like the reason for going, the time
> of going, the source of energy for going, the cost of going, etc.

I think this analysis is very useful, although not absolutely true.
It does not account, for example, for the place structure of "dunda":

        x1 gives x2 to x3

for surely x2 and x3, the gift and the recipient, are equally central.
The influence there is probably English habits of speech: the formulation
"A gives B C" where B is now the recipient and C the gift, would be hard
to read, and thus was avoided.  But it is true that the places are
(generally speaking) ordered so that the less-central places will be near
the end, so that they can easily be made elliptical.

>     I see no reason not to start with
> > x1 is a doghouse of/for dogs x2 of species/breed x3
> and let places fall into disuse.

I think this view is totally sound, because "letting a place
fall into disuse" is tantamount to always filling it with "zo'e", as opposed
to removing it altogether.  If "gerkyzda" is given this place structure,
as I believe it should be, then it will rarely be useful or communicatively
(as opposed to logically) necessary to fill the x3 place.  Since it is at
the end, it can remain in existence for purposes of logic, while remaining
effectively dead for purposes of language.  Nevertheless, whenever greater
rigor is needed, it could be resurrected and filled, as I did with the
last two places of "klama" and "cliva" in Example 3.

In direct response to lojbab, I would say that the actual deletion of the
x3 (dog breed) place would make an effective difference only if there are
some dogs which live in houses but don't belong to a species/breed.  If
there are no such instances, then the two concepts with and without x3
are the same for all practical purposes.

Lojbab replied to his correspondent thus:

% There is every expectation that some places will fall off from disuse,
% but this is what language evolution is about.  If the place falls off, though,
% under the definitions of predicate logic, it is a different predicate.  It
% has different truth conditions, etc.  All of predicate logic is based on the
% foundation that two predicates are not identical if they have different
% numbers of or sets of arguments.  I can't change this by fiat even if I
% wanted to, and Lojban has to be concsistent with predicate logic to have the
% claim of being a "logical language".

This is true only if the place really goes extinct as opposed to being
almost never filled (which is the status of the x2 place of "gerku" anyway:
how often do we think of "gerku" as a 2-place relationship between an
individual dog and its species/breed?).  I think it is entirely safe to
let such places maintain a shadowy existence, perhaps being filled only
in exceptional circumstances.  Once we officially delete them, there is
no going back.

In sum, I am becoming more and more convinced that the whole idea of
"deleting a place because it's irrelevant to the [English or other NL]
concept" is the most stinking of red-herrings.  We should remove only places
that clearly overlap other places or that are implicitly filled by other
lujvo members taken as events (in belenu-lujvo, e.g.).

--
John Cowan              sharing account <lojbab@access.digex.net> for now
                e'osai ko sarji la lojban.