Re: misc respsonses to And from last month

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

Lojbab:
> >> >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"?

He says "bah", which one might symbolize as /ba:/ or /bA:/ or /bA/
or /baa/ or /bAA/. At any rate, in no accent of English (AFAIK) is
the vowel phoneme in /baN/, "bang", the same as the one in "bah".

> >> 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.

The minimal test shows precisely the opposite of this. Is the phonetic
event k[belch]lama a possible word in Lojban? If not, then the example
is irrelevant for investigatating the phonemic status of belch. If it
is a possible word, is it a different word from k%lama/kalama/kelama/
kilama/kolama/kulama/k@lama? [For convenience, ignore the possibility
it could be /k.lama/.] The answer is No. If the answer was Yes, then
it would be established that belch is a phoneme.

> 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.

But that's a different use of {jai}, isn't it? I used jai + BAI, but
you're talking about jai + SELBRI.

> >I don't think any construction necessarily expresses something
> >nondynamic.
[I meant: in English]
> >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).

Strictly speaking, it is wrong to say that *predicates* are telic and
durative, for it is situations that have such properties, not predicates
(which are logical objects).

For some but not all gismu the definition entails that some situation
is involved and it has certain properties - e.g. {cinba} necessarily
involves a kiss, and that is clearly not a state.

I don't see how you extrapolate from English to Lojban. I can't
retrace your reasoning by which you reached the multiply erroneous
conclusion "all Lojban predicates are telic and durative". Please try
again.

> >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).

Not as a metaphor - what I mean is that here you are observing this
phenomenon, & it's up to you to categorize it according to which
categories it seems to fit into. There's no obvious right and wrong
categorization.

> >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.

I understand and approve of this stuff about patterns in the universal
flux. So let us hope we may come to understand one another.

Take some particular eddy in the universal flux. Call it Ted. Ted is
what happens when the 100m sprint final is held at the LA olympics.
The property of being a race running does not inhere in Ted. It is
you who categorizes Ted as a race running (& indeed it is you who marks
Ted off as distinct from the rest of the universe that is not Ted).

Now, one of the things we know about the class of race runnings is
that one of its membership requirements is that its members be a
process, just as being a dog entails being a mammal. So if you
categorize Ted as a race running, you are categorizing T as a process.
If you categorize Ted as, say, a state, then you can't categorize
T as a race running; rather you have to categorize T as a race-running-
oidal-ish-thingy, which is a category distinct from but similar to
Race Running.

> >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 (%^).

None of the Lojban predicates are defined yet. That you insist on leaving
up to usage. But, examining usage, I believe you're wrong. See my
remarks above, esp. re cinba.

> >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.

The rules of a nat lang exist in the mind of its speaker. The rules of
a conlang exist in the design specification (e.g. the various lojban
reference works). The rules in the design specification may purport
to amount to an entire language, or they may specify the merest
fragment of a language.

> 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

I venture that there is no usage for which you can expressly state the
rule. That does not matter. What matters is that you know the rule,
and we can tell that you know the rule because we can observe you
using it. Working out what the rule actually says is what keeps
academic linguists employed.

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.

That's why I object to their being suggested as a solution.

> 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.

The justification for loading up selbri with "all manner of reducers of
semantic ambiguity" is both great and obvious: it reduces vagueness.

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.

If true, then this would indeed be a reason why fi-fa-fu is hard.
But if true, it means Lojban is syntactically unlike natlangs, which
indeed it may be.

> 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.

True, that strikes me as hard. I can never understand how the Japanese
manage to speak Japanese, & I'm mystified by the prevalence of V-final
clause ordering.

> 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.

There is no defined reason not to do so, either. None of this stuff
you're on about is in the refgrammar.

My purpose is not to be obfuscatory or ornery, or at least not
for the hell of it. Lojban is defined as having syntactic
capabilities far more complex than those that actually see use.
What is actually used is pidgin lojban. If a fieldworker came
along and wrote a grammar of lojban it would look nothing like
the design specification. I am, in an experimental and exploratory
way, trying to use real rather than pidgin lojban; I'm trying to
use the grammar as defined by the design spec, not as defined by
everyday usage.

If you find the result difficult, it shows either that you just
don't have a good enough command of Lojban, or that there are
real parts of lojban grammar that are determined but not yet
promulgated in documents, or that the design doesn't work. Personally,
I think it is most likely that the first of these is so, and
least likely that the last is so.

coo, mie And