Re: response on old posting - lujvo-making TECH/PHILOSOPHY (long)

[Jorge Llambias <jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU>]

I think I really don't disagree with most of what lojbab says, but
I'd like to word some of the things differently. (He may then
disagree with my wording :)

I will delete most of the post I'm answering to keep it short. I hope
I'm not misrepresenting lojbab's points by quoting out of context.

> I see a danger of overanalysis and overprescription
> which will straightjacket people learning and using the language,

I think Nick makes it clear in his paper that he is not setting rules,
but describing how many/most lujvo have been made.

I agree with the anonymous correspondent:
> >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.).
>
> This argument has the problem backwards.  Indeed for examples that we
> use NOW, we are talking of deleting places to match a natlang concept.

But the whole discussion has been about these examples. I doubt that
there will be a need to create words for concepts that don't exist in a
natlang for at least some time.

> But in pure Lojban thought, without recourse to translation, we want to
> be able to freely create relations between concepts.  So when I want to
> talk about a motion predicate CONCEPT that is in my mind, one that links
> a thing moving, a destination, and let us say a means of locomotion, and
> I wish to make no other implications of relation than these three
> things, how do I express it.

Since in Lojban the notion of motion cannot be disentangled from that
of a path/route, (without recourse to zi'o), then you'd have to settle
for something like:

li'urfa'o (litru fanmo) f1 (f2=nu litru) l1 l2 l3
x1 is the finish/end of x2's travel along x3 by means/vehicle x4

Or:

tolyli'a (to'e cliva)
x1 arrives to x2 via x3 using means/vehicle x4

I can't think of any that doesn't involve a route, unless zi'o
is used. What lujvo did you have in mind for that concept?
I don't think you can just drop the route places from one like
those.

>  Thinking in Lojban, I conceive of a concept.  I try to
> make a lujvo for it.  But the 'fat lujvo' advocates that would insist on
> all places being present, mean that the choice of almost any gismu to
> add into my (presumably lean) concept, will add one or more extraneous
> places to the representation of my concept.

I certainly don't identify myself as a 'fat lujvo advocate', I prefer
to remove, because of being filled or being doubled up, as many places
as possible in lujvo. I suspect that when a place doesn't seem to
belong, it is usually due to a fat source gismu, or not a good choice
of gismu.

> Now I think it GOOD that Lojban force me to consider whether, for
> example, a dog house maker has in mind a particular breed of dog.

Of course, before thinking of the dog house maker, we could think
of just the dog house. Is a dog house intrinsically for a particular
breed of dog? I'd say no, so the problem has nothing to do with the
lujvo for dog house maker, but for the one for dog house.
And we can keep going back and ask whether what we want as the component
of gerzda is {gerku be zo'e} or {gerku be zi'o}. I'd say the latter
is a better translation of English "dog", because in most cases we
are not talking about the relationship between an individual and
a breed, but rather, simply about a certain type of individual(s).
We want a gismu that is parallel to remna, but referring to dogs
instead of humans. Such a gismu doesn't exist, and then we have to
use something approximate.

> the fact that
> I can theoretically fill the place with 'loi se gerku' is really rather
> pointless (indeed, this is one obvious criterion where Nick might
> specifically identify possible lujvo place deletion - when the value of
> the place is 'loi [the corresponding gismu place]' without any
> restriction.

This is an interesting idea. At least it's not a totally arbitrary
deletion.

> I want lujvo-makers to _conceive_ first, then make lujvo to match their
> conceptions.  I don't think they should be constrained by our ad hoc,
> often arbitrary, and probably cultrually-biased decisions about gismu
> place structures.

Those arbitrary place structures are what the language is about, no?
If we can throw some away because they don't fit when making lujvo,
why wouldn't we do the same when they don't fit in using them as gismu?

> When you are making a lujvo, it should be irrelevant whether the gismu
> you are making it from is 'fat'.  The lujvo is NOT the gismu; it is a
> different, albeit (hopefully) related word.

But is it related to the relationship represented by the gismu, or to some
other relationship represented by a zi'oed gismu?

> The place wasn't "lost" to me because that isn't how >I< make lujvo.
> The gismu suggests a meaning - that is the nature of metaphor.  There is
> no particular likelihood that some other gismu will have the same place
> structure but one less place, and you shouldn;t be compelled to try to
> find one - especially when you are making a lujvo on a pattern-transfer
> basis, as I suspect many will be.

Ok, so you say that it's legitimate to use a rafsi to represent either
a gismu, or a zi'oed gismu. I don't like this. I'd say that the likelihood
of that some other gismu to exist should be proportional to the likelihood
that it will be needed. The better the gismu cover "concept space", the
more likely the gismu you need will exist.

> A similar argument I've often seen (no quote handy), especially in
> discussions between Nick and Jorge, is that it is possibly biased to
> delete some places but not others, and that this implies that 'the wrong
> gismu is being used'.  But the alternative would be a requirement that
> there be gismu for all possible combinations of sumti with and without
> other sumti present, to make it possible to form whatever place
> structure you want to express.

That may be true. But the idea is that most possible relationships won't be
needed/useful.

>  In designing Lojban, I have made a
> strong case that lujvo be fairly literal, and that you shouldn't
> willy-nilly introduce places that are not related to any of the
> lujvo-components.
>
> Even there, however, >I< would want to occasionally accept unrelated
> places provided that there is a meaningful 'term-deletion' from a
> specific longer-lujvo taking place to make the resulting lujvo shorter.

I don't have any problem with this happening as a result of usage. I don't
like it as a method to make lujvo to translate a specific word, for example
when tranlating the Eton list.

> But the more (literal-lujvo)ists want totally predictable place
> structures and an absence of the possible natlang bias anything else
> might permit, or even encourage.

I think that totally predictable place structures are not possible, if
most of the lujvo that have been created are to make sense. I have not
seen any proposal for such, either.

> I think such predictability would suffocate the langauge though.

I agree, but fortunately nobody is advocating it, as far as I know.

> I want
> to be able to make a short word that reflects a reasonably-simple and
> frequently-expressed thought/concept/relationship.  This means I want in
> lujvo MAKING to be able to ignore the analysis that Nick wants, and make
> the lujvo I want to, on an ad hoc basis.

I think this is what everybody will do, anyway. The point is that such
a lujvo won't become a dictionary word unless it enters the language
by being used (more than once and by more than one speaker, of course)
or it is written in the dictionary as a definition (like all gismu).
In this last case, I don't think we can simply remove places because
they don't fit the concept.

> On the other hand, if we have taught good lujvo-making HABITS, then a
> lujvo will be quickly made, which will be close enough to algorithmic
> that a listener should be able to analyze the lujvo using algorithmic
> techniques, apply some common sense, and confirm what context says about
> the place structure.

How can you teach those good habits, if you don't know what they are.
The identification of the underlying patterns is a way of creating those
habits.

> If Lojban is ever to become a real spoken language, people will have to
> be able to coin lujvo this quickly, not have to memorize place
> structures systematically, and be able to learn the skill much more
> easily than the thousands of words and place structures he needs to have
> that 50-100K words often said characterize a typical educated speaker.

The easy-to-coin lujvo are the regular ones. The irregulars will of course
creep in by usage, but they will have to be learned almost as gismu.
(Almost, because there will still be some clues.)

My question is: How do you write the definition of a lujvo in a
dictionary? If the lujvo has been used a lot, then we look at
how it's been used, and get from there the place structure.
If we are creating the lujvo for the dictionary, there is no usage
to base the definition on, but we can still get a pretty good idea
of what places it has/should have.

> I think people are forgetting this VITAL goal when they argue for fat
> lujvo, thoroughly analytical place structures, etc.

I haven't seen those arguments, so I can't comment.


> lojbab

Jorge