misc respsonses to And from last month

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

And last month:
>> >You have the formal definition wrong.  To see why, consider the
>> >following example. suppose in English /N/ occurred only
>> >syllable-finally.  Then, it would not be the case that because there is
>> >no contrast between the presence and absence of /N/ - e.g.  /baN/ v.
>> >*/ba/ there is therefore no /N/ phoneme.
>> I don't follow this.  You asterisked /ba/ so obviously there IS a
>> contrast.
>
>Minimal pairs are actual or potential phonological items. */ba/ is not,
>so */ba/ v. /baN/ is not a minimal pair. I was explaining how you had
>mistaken the nature of minimal-pairhood.

What does Scrooge say in Christmas Carol before "humbug"?

>> There IS no contrast in Lojban between klama and k%lama, both
>> are identical words
>
>Quite. I understand this. So let us write it /k%lama/.
>
>You then have a seven way contrast: k%lama/kalama/kelama/kilama/kolama/
>kulama/k@lama. These are minimal pairs. Hence, /%/ is a phoneme.

Using this argument, one could invent a large number of phonemes.
/belch/ becomes a phoneme, the moment someone does it in the middle of a
word, since they have just created a minimal pair between k[belch]lama
and all of the above.

Different thread:
>> >> and the subcategories allow me even to define a substructural way of
>> >> looking at that occurance.
>> >{lo pruce jai fau broda} would do just as well, and would have a
>> >proper syntax-semantics match.
>>
>> The use of jai IMPLIES the existence of an abstraction by
>> transformation.  Provide the explicit transform, please, without using
>> any abstractors.
>
>I don't understand. Please try again.

Since "da jai broda" is defined to mean that there is an abstraction in
x1, of which da is a sumti, there must exist such a grammatical
abstraction which results via transformation in the raised form "da jai
broda".  Since we know that is a raised form, I am asking you to define
the corresponding unraised form.

>I don't think any construction necessarily expresses something
>nondynamic.  Progressives must denote things that are dynamic.  Duration
>can be tested by acceptability of durative _for_.  Telicity in verbs is
>harder to test - if you can say things like "in 3 hours" then it's
>telic.

If I understand this, then there is nothing in the definition of any
predicate forbidding sumti tcita "for" phrases and/or "in 3 hours", so
all Lojban predicates are telic and durative (except that a point event
abstraction is semantically defined to treat the duration as being
semantically of insignificant length).

>Well of course in principle that is possible.  You can construe a race
>running as a herd of purple elephants too, if you so wish.

If I am running in it wearing my purple jogging outfit, the metaphor
would be appropropriate (I am quite obese).

>Less expostulatorily, I agree that a particular instance of race running
>may be conceptualized as something other than a process, but, to repeat,
>you are thereby creating a new category, of atypical race runnings.

No, because it is the same race-running that you viewed as an event, not
one that is necessarily atypical.  I am practicing metaphysical
deconstructionism on the flow of the universe.  If I choose to view the
universe as a bunch of uncontinuous, independent events, I might see
some different patterns than someone who views evereything as mutually
dependent, but not a different universe.

>Consider a tennis ball.  You can conceptualize it as a mere aggregation
>of matter, its shape being an accidental irrelevance, or you can
>conceptualize it as a sphere, with its shape being an integral property
>that makes it eligible for spherehood.  But the definition of the
>category of balls includes the requirement of approximate sphericality,
>so when you're conceptualizing some ball as a mere splodge of matter,
>you're not conceptualizing it as a ball.

True (unless you are talking about American footballs), but few if any
Lojban predicates are semantically defined so as to be constrained in
duration, telicity, or dynamite (%^).

>How about {ro pa fiu ro sohi fiu mahu mahu mehi mehi daa rae}?

Lessee, the ro's are semantically null so we have
1/many/++<<[all but]...

We have something less than a number less than [all but], and this
number is apparently a positive number.  The mathematical rules for
understanding nested fractions says that the second fraction slash could
be replaced by multiplication.  Beyond that I cannot make much
characterization of this number, but it is not, strictly speaking,
nonsense.

>Whichever answer you give, I'll be satisifed.  If you can tell me the
>interpretation rules then my objection is answered, and if you can't
>then at least I've got you to see that the phenomenon of rulelessness
>exists.

No, it may simply be like natural languages, where rules may exist but
have not necessarily been specified/discovered.  I speak English quite
well. but I guarantee that there are a lot of usages for which I cannot
expressly state the rule I use to justify a given usage (and I dare say
in at least some of those cases, some other English speaker will use a
different rule to come up with a different interpreation, and probably
there will be different rules that come up with the SAME interpretation
as well.

ni'o (ZAhO in tanru?)
>> I think he meant something like {selfanmo citno ke ralju} and
>> {selfanmo ke citno ralju}.
>
>That's irksome, because every ZAhO must be duplicated by a lujvo, just
>because ZAhO has the wrong syntax.  And moreover, these examples would
>give true tanru, whereas ZAhO, like NAhE, are more rule governed
>semantically than true tanru.

Well, there OUGHT to be a brivla for every member of ZAhO.

And tanru are supposed to be - tanru, and NOT "rule-governed" in
semantics.  We have some limited capability to define modification
scope.  We have the capability to indicate term ordering.  "na'e" made
it in with "rules" as part of the resolution of the specific problem of
negation, after an INTENSIVE examination of the issue of negation as a
cross-linguistic phenomenon, and even so, in order to be "logical", it
should have an implicit predicate place for the scale.  Scalar negation
as a semantic device is arguably a linguistic universal; explicit
expression of tense contour is not, and certainly not as an element of
metaphor.  There is little justification for loading up selbri with all
manner of reducers of semantic ambiguity - it is our assumption that
such semantic ambiguity cannot be completely eliminated, and therefore
we are not inclined to do a halfway effort.

ni'o
>> >> Fi-fa-fu-Lojban is very obfuscating, especially in
>> >> combination with jaifau-Lojban.
>> >Is there a clear reason for that, apart from its unfamiliarity?
>> Yes. fi-fai-fo-fum are very much like cases, but the fo-ative case
>> doesn't have a generic meaning outside a particular selbri. Maybe the
>> fa-ative tends to be nominative and the feative is accusative, but by
>> the time you're at the 3rd or 4th place the meaning is completely
>> context-dependent.
>
>But why is this harder than usage without FA (i.e. in normal x1, x2, x3
>... order)?

Because people memorize the places in a certain order rather than as
having certain place numbers, and you are intentionally marking them by
their place numbers.  This forces the listener to tag the sumti by place
number and overtly rearrange them in his head for interpretation per the
selbri place structure.  Then when you compound this by leaving the
selbri unstated until the end, you are forcing the irresolution of the
semantics of all these places to be maintained.

You are doing this for NO reason except to be obfuscatory (or maybe
ornery %^), since Lojban has no defined semantic purpose for significant
rearrangement of places, and only some mild pragmatic purposes (focus
and heaviness of terms) that at most would justify moving one sumti
(moving more would lead to confusing or even contradictory pragmatic
messages - was this done to simplify the elidables and make a heavy term
lighter, or was it done to put emphasis on the sumti?  Marking all the
places puts emphasis on all of them - and there simply is no defined
reason to do so.

lojbab