Re: replies re. ka & mamta be ma

[ucleaar <ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk>]

Jorge:
> > > > Every lg needs a word/morpheme for "1", but doesn't need one
> > > > word/morpheme for "7582342".
> > > Needs?
> > "Need" by some criterion whereby the language ought to approximately
> > model cognition/world-view.
> I don't understand. How do you determine using that criterion, whether
> for example pronouns are needed or not?

That criterion would apply for the 1/7582342 case. In the case of
pronouns we have different criteria: the tradeoff between ease of
usage and complexity of grammar (which makes a lg more difficult
to learn & use). This criterion is the one I was ignoring for
the purposes of our thought-experiment.

> Does a language without a word for "zero" approximately model
> cognition/world view or not?

That's a question for research.

> Whose cognition/world view? Is there a universal human one?

My (fairly uncontroversial) belief is that there are cognitive
universals, but not a single all-encompassing universal world-
view.

I also hold that a lg is a partial model of a world view (not
necessarily the world view of any specific actual person). It
is legitimate to hope for a reasonable match between one's
world view and that modelled by the language one is using.
For example, if Lojban had a gismu such that its x1 are
either feet or alphabets, I would find it strange that (i)
feet & alphabets constitute an intuitive category, and (ii)
this category is relatively useful or basic (as gismu-hood
implies).

> You are going from an absolutist "need", where a word for "1" is
> obviously not essential, to something very fuzzy, where it is just as
> arguable that a word like "kau" is needed.

I am indeed speaking of different sorts of need. As for it being
just as arguable that a word like "kau" is needed (by this world-
view) criterion, yes it is arguable, but that doesn't mean such
an argument will be convincing. At present, I don't see how you
would argue the case. Here is my case against: Given a sentence S,
from S can be derived a proposition, P, which constitutes part
of the meaning of S. P can be represented using pred calc, & pred
calc, in matters such as scope, quantification, variables, etc.,
is a reasonable model of P as it is in our minds. {kau} (in its
"indirect interrogative" use is merely a syntactic variant of
{kau}-less circumlocution, since both variants come out the same
when the S is translated into P done in prec calc.

> > > > > There are many ways of expressing the same idea. That holds for every
> > > > > language, including Lojban.
> > > > And so it follows by my reasoning that you cd get away with having
> > > > only one way.
> > > How does that follow?
> > There are many ways I can light my cigarette. A petrol lighter, matches,
> > the stove... I could get away with using only one of them.
> Certainly, but how could you get away with making all other ways
> impossible?

I'd been assuming we were talking about syntax/grammar. If you
have two alternative syntactic devices with same meaning then one
is redundant (e.g. "X kissed Y"/"X was kissed by" "long book"/
"book that is long").

> My point is that once you have a language capable of expressing
> human thought, a fortiori you have a language where every idea can be
> expressed in a very large variety of ways. You are saying that in principle
> you can restrict the "words/grammar" of the language in such a way that
> each idea can only be expressed in one single way.

I'm saying that in principle you can restrict the grammar-lexicon
so that identical expressions of a given idea invoke the same set
of rules of grammar-lexicon. It is obvious that no language has
an infinite array of grammatical devices, so for every lg there
is a finite number of grammatical devices employable in expressing
a given idea. I claim that this finite number can in principle be
restricted to one. I am assuming that sentences "expressing the same
idea" are truth-conditionally equivalent.

> > > In fact, I doubt that you could device a language
> > > for standard human comunication in which each idea can be expressed in
> > > a unique single way.
> > This is not the goal I've been speculating about. Rather, I've been
> > speculating about minimizing the size of the grammar.
> You could reduce the grammar to zero by having a different word for each
> different idea. "a" would mean "Please, pass the salt", "aa" would mean
> "Thank you", "aaa" would mean "It looks like we'll have rain tomorrow",
> and so on. You would need a very large dictionary, but only a trivial
> grammar.

In my view the grammar includes the lexicon, so your suggestion would
vastly increase the size of the grammar, though it would reduce the
complexity of the grammar. Anyway, needless to say, your proposal wd
have very different properties from natural languages, since nat lgs
use a finite grammar to generate an infinite set of sentences, which
can express novel ideas.

> That wouldn't work for humans, but I'm not sure whether you are
> imposing the condition that humans should be able to handle it.

I would impose this condition, but under the heading of "necessary
conveniences" rather than "necessary for expressive power".

> In some cases you are happy to substitute simple "human" expressions
> with unfathomable logical constructions.

No I'm not happy to do that. I believe that the so-called unfathomable
logical constructions are in fact fathomable - are in fact fairly
close models of the conceptual structures we derive from sentences.
Going back to {Q-kau}, I don't believe we understand it by magic:
rather we unconsciously translate it into a logical structure (however
difficult it may be to fathom consciously) and that constitutes our
understanding of Q-kau.

> > And I do think
> > one could do without duplicating constructions of equivalent expressive
> > power.
> And I think you couldn't. Since neither of us can probably demonstrate
> their thesis, I guess that's that.

I'll demonstrate my thesis: Most kinds of attributive adjective are
semantically equivalent to a construction where the adj is used
predicatively in a relative clause - long book/book that is long.
These types of attrib adj could be got rid of, and we would still
be able to express the idea of long books - by "books that are long".

> > > But then expressing ideas is not as simple as finding a notation for
> > > numbers, nor is it simple (maybe impossible in some cases) to say when
> > > two ideas are the same, which you need to do in order to check whether
> > > you are duplicating some of them or not.
> > Fortunately that's not the issue.

[Though NB I suggest truth-conditional equivalence as a method.]

> > Lexis & syntax is less slippery than
> > semantics, and L & S are what I was hypothetically seeking to simplify.
> Well, but you are mixing in semantics. Lojban syntax is trivial. Doing
> away with {kau} doesn't simplify it, because {kau} is part of selmaho
> UI, you'd have to get rid of the whole selmaho to affect the syntax of
> the language. What you are saying is that there are other syntactic
> structures with the same meaning as the ones using {kau}. But dismissing
> {kau} does not change the syntax of the language. It only affects the
> semantics.

Dismissing {kau} affects the grammar because (a) the size of the lexicon
is reduced (by one) [(a) is not semantics, but then nor is it the sort
of simplification we've been talking about], and (b) the lexeme-specific
and complicated rules for deriving semantic structure from syntactic
structure containg {kau} could be scrapped. (i) Whether you call (b)
syntax, and (ii) whether whether you call (b) syntax is important depend
on your chosen theory. For the purposes of this discussion, I count
(b) as something on the list of things to be simplified (in the
hypothetical minimal language).

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And