egality

[ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>]

Xorxe:
> > > He meant "more equal"
> > > suggesting "superior", which is not precisely closer to the mode.
> > First, that's why my Lojban version says "X is more equal to Y than
> > Y is to X", which implies "equal" is asymmetric, perverted to
> > "superior:inferior".
> But in Orwell's phrase asymmetry never comes up.

"All people are equal" = "Ax Ay x is as statused as y"
which entails "y is as statused as x". "Some are more equal
than others" = "Ex Ey x is more statused than y", which does
not entail "y is more statused than x". That's where the asymmetry
is.
The meaning of "equal" is perverted from "as statused as" in the
first clause, to "statused" in the second clause, which might
then precipitate a reinterpretation of the first clause to "statused".
Cf. "everyone is tall, but some are taller than others".

You say the same:
> the way Orwell achieves that meaning is by treating "equal" in the
> second part as a property like "happy" or "rich" rather than as a
> reciprocal property, which is what makes sense for the first part of
> the sentence.

The question of whether "more statused than" should be a tersuzrelterbri
or zmadu + a terpavterbri is a matter of taste.

> > Second, if one group is deviates further from
> > the mean in length or social status then that entails that some members
> > of the group are superior to others.
> Yes, but whereas in that case the superior ones are among the most
> deviant, in Orwell's phrase, the more equal (which would be the least
> deviant) are supposed to be superior. So I don't think "more equal"
> here has anything to do with deviation from the mean.
> (At least I always understood that the "more equal" were the pigs,
> not the rest.)

That's how I'd previously understood it, but it doesn't have to be
understood that way.

> > or "All groups of people exhibit egality, but some groups of people
> > exhibit egality to a greater extent than other groups of people do".
> I don't think you can read it like that. The first part doesn't
> really say that all animals are equal only to other members within
> their class.

It should be "The group of all animals exhibits egality, but..."

> > > My point is that for the _second sentence_ to make sense, "equal"
> > > has to be taken as one-place, because "more" is comparing some
> > > people to others, and not a relationship going one way or the other
> > > way between a given pair of arguments.
> > I don't see why. "Some people are more reluctant than others" doesn't
> > turn reluctance into a one-place;
> For our purposes it does.

What are our purposes? All I'm saying is that reluctance isn't reluctance
if it isn't reluctance about something. The x2 is zohe, not ziho.

> > > (a) {dunli} is a suhore-place Lojban predicate.
> >                    ^^^^^^
> > Have I succeeded in subverting Lojban orthography at last then?
> Not at all! I was using "suhore" as an English word, a borrowing
> from Lojban. I also usually write "selmaho", "lehavla", etc. in English.

Ah. It sounds like Latin. Selmaho, selmahere, selmaxi, selmactum.
So the English for "selmaho" should be "selmactor". And "cmavo" -
what would that be? Aha: cmavo, cmavas, cmavat, cmavamus, cmavatis,
cmavant. So "selmaho" would also be "cmavatum" or "cmavate" in
English.

In Spanish, do you write "sujore, selmajo, lejavla"?

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And