JCB on "loi" ("lo" in Loglan)

The following article by JCB was published in TL1/3 (February 1977), pages
177-80.  I think it makes clear that "loi" (his "lo") reflects the
collective/porridge view of Loglan masses, not the myopic-singular view,
despite the frequent references to Trobrianders --- who apparently do, at least
in JCB's view of them, think of "Mr. Rabbit" as what And called a
"midgard-rabbit-hydra".

I have rendered the '75 Loglan into Lojban, and enclosed it in square
brackets, since of course Lojban is no part of JCB's text.  Otherwise,
I have silently corrected his mechanical errors and left his errors of
reasoning intact with editorial notes marked with {\ednote } brackets,
TeXly.  There are other TeXisms which shouldn't bother anybody too much:
"\ldots" signifies an ellipsis mark, three dots, suspension points.


				ON THE CREATURES OF [LOI]

				James Cooke Brown

This little Trobriander is one of the most perplexing of Loglan's troop of
designators.  His work is especially elusive, I gather, to those trained in
the designation habits of English.  Yet [loi] is also one of the friendliest
of companions \ldots once one has got safely inside the ontological borders
of Loglandia.  It is a guided tour among the creatures to be found there that
I am attempting here.

The chief problem with [loi] for English-speakers seems to be a matter of
scale.  It is the very hugeness of the creatures of [loi] that makes them
baffling.  Is it ever true, for example, that [loi smani cu farlu loi tricu]?
`How can that be?' we ask perplexedly.  `What a resounding thump on the forest
floor he would have made!  Someone would have heard him.'

And of course we believe it could never ``really'' happen.  Unlike the
molecules in the famous Tennessee coal-bucket (which was said to have moved
without visible assistance from one side of the schoolroom to the other),
monkeys, we know, do not ever dart off in the same direction at the same
time.  So our image of [loi smani] is apparently one of some gigantic
individual made up of monkeys --- all neatly linked together by rubber bands
to make him ``organic'', of course --- who has somehow managed to fall out
of Mr. Tree all at once.  (We have less difficulty with the behavior of Mr.
Tree.  {\it He} stands still.)  Isn't that how {\it little} monkeys behave
when they fall out of trees? Surely when {\it they} fall, they fall ``all at
once.''  They don't, in particular, leave hands, tails, and rumps glued to
branches while the rest of them --- head-and-shoulders, say --- ``falls out
of trees.''  So we say confidently, secure in our knowledge of how ``organic
things'' fall, that it can't be true that Mr.  Monkey {\it ever} falls out
of Mr. Tree.  Parts of him do, to be sure.  (He is a curiously disjointable
fellow!)  But not {\it him}.  Not Mr. Monkey himself.  Not the creature that
[loi], in its Trobriand way, has created for our mystification.

But wait a minute.  When {\it you} laugh, do you laugh all over?  Perhaps
you do.  But when you solve an equation, do your toes get in the act?  You,
too, are a massive conglomerate of heterogenous structures performing diverse
functions.  It's true that when {\it you} fall, you fall ``all over.''  But
when you cry or itch you do not cry or itch all over.  [do cmila], [do krixa],
[do tavla], [do raktcu],
	{\ednote A typically bad Institute lujvo (``scratch-need'') for
	``itch''.  I may need to scratch and yet not itch, or vice versa.}
			 and [do cisma] all have the same curiously partitive
truth-conditions as [loi smani cu farlu loi tricu] has.  When we test the
truth of such sentences we do {\it not} require that the individual so
designated be performing in the predicated way ``all over.''  So it is
apparently sufficient that Mr.  Monkey lets a foot fall, so to speak, for
[loi smani cu farlu loi tricu] to be true.

Let us now try to imagine exactly what it is we are dealing with when we
conjure up a creature of [loi].  Obviously we are almost never dealing with
an army of parts all of which behave, like well-drilled soldiers, in exactly
the same ways at the same times.  Few [loi]-creatures are like bags of marbles
all conveniently trapped together to be thrown up in the air at one time.
Just as {\it you} have a nose for sneezing, a back for itching, an eye or
two for blinking and vocal cords for crying, so Mr. Monkey has some few parts
which fall while others cling, some parts which forage on the ground while
others leap successfully from branch to branch while still others are busy
copulating.  {\it All} this is going on all the time.  It is what Mr. Monkey
does.  It is exactly what ``species'' of monkeys do.  Sentences about this
species process, then, are true if and only if some relevant part of the mass
individual created by [loi] is, in fact, performing in the specified way.
A species {\it is} ``a curiously disjointable fellow'', but a real fellow
nonetheless.

Now the intended designatum of any biological species-name is, since Darwin,
exactly coextensive with some creature of [loi].  (Apparently the Trobriands
lived in a species-world long before Darwin!)  [loi remna], for example,
designates exactly the same fellow as biologists label {\it Homo sapiens}.
Think about that the next time you wonder how it can possibly be true that
``you'' own a pencil.  What part of you shall be required to be an ``owner''
of ``your'' pencil?  And if no part, how can all of you ``own a pencil''?
Clearly we cannot quire that all portions of you ([piro do]) be festooned
with pencils.  We shall not require, for example, that your liver be riddled
with pencils for the sentence [do flapli] to be true.  ([flapli] = `legal-use'
= [flalu pilno] = `have use-rights in'.)
	{\ednote The original word was `lipli', which is a pre-1982 lujvo
	that happens to be in gismu form; note that its etymology is explained,
	as was standard then, since rafsi did not yet exist.}
			We do not require that your pencil-ownership be
``universally distributed'' over all your parts for the same reason that we
do not require that each human being shall have made at least one tool before
we accept the anthropologist's dictum that {\it Homo sapiens} ``is a
tool-making animal.''  Such dicta must be carefully examined on other grounds.
But it is clear that statements about creatures of [loi] are almost never
interpretable as universals ranging smoothly over all their parts.  (Even
water is not wet all over.)

Now let's observe how convenient for more than biology conjurations with
[loi] turn out to be.  [ko'a flapli loi pinsi] is something we can say about
X without counting the pencils in his pockets, or even noticing what parts
of his body they are stuck to.  But is this swift assessment of the contents
of X's tool-kit {\it exactly} the same thing as saying, with our precisely
quantified [da poi] form, for example, [ko'a flapli da poi pinsi] = `X has
use rights in at least one something x that is a pencil'?  Well, in this case
it is.  We must admit that these two sentences have identical truth-conditions.
That is to say, given a suitable definition of the predicate [flapli], whatever
causes us to call one of these sentences true or false will wring the same
judgment from us about the other.  What we see at a glance, namely that a
part, appearance, or manifestation of Mr. Pencil is indeed available for X's
use and is in that sense in his ``possession'', amounts, in this case, to
our saying that at least one individual pencil is also (in that same sense)
in his possession.  Pencils {\it are} like marbles, but in this case widely
scattered ones.  But ontologically, the designata of the two sentences are
very different.  How niggardly the [da]-form seems to be in contract to our
grand invocation of Mr. Pencil peeking out of pockets everywhere, including
this one!  That he peeks out of just {\it this} X's pocket we
can celebrate, in Trobriand fashion, by swiftly invoking, not the distribution
of his parts, but his functional identity.  Mr. Pencil exists.  And so do
individual pencils.  But the mass individual is more than just a collectivity
of the little ones; he is a species.  For with [loi pinsi] we announce an
ontological vision.  We have noticed the existence of a functional individual
\ldots one who happens to have been important in the history of writing (as
no individual pencil, note, either was or will be).  In doing so we have
created, for our minds, a ``tool-species'': womething that is in many
interesting wasy analogous to the living species we find in nature.

Now it is not the case that every setence with a [loi]-form is even truth-
conditionally equivalent to the same sentence made with [da poi].  In fact,
it seldom is.  Consider, [loi cinfo cu se stufa'i loi remna piro la .afrikas.]
     {\ednote The Loglan-75 place structure of `sivdu', here rendered by its
     etymological equivalent `stufa'i', is: x1 finds/locates x2 at point x3.}
     {\ednote Loglan-75 can't mark irregular stress in names, so I haven't
     either.}
= `The lion is found by man all over Africa.'  Setting aside the literal truth of
this claim, to which I am not zoologist enough to testify, try putting this
one in the precisely quantified language of [da]-forms.  It can be done; but
it's an unnecessary exercise \ldots unless we want to describe the probability
distribution of lions as interested ecologists.  In both the Loglan sentence
and the English one, three individuals are involved: two mass individuals
and a particular though ``massive'' one:  [loi cinfo], Mr. Lion; [loi remna],
Mr. Human Being; and [la .afrikas.], a big continent.   To say that the lion
is found by man all over the face of Africa is to assert, in part, that the
first two of these individuals have occasional confrontations.  But it is
also to say that the probability of observing such a confrontation is non-zero
for observers standing {\it most} places on the surface of the third individual
(surely we will exempt downtown Nairobi!).  How handsomely the designation
of [loi]-creatures enables us to say this.  How handsomely, indeed, the
English sentence enables us to say the same complex thing.  For it happens
that, as far as lions, men, and the surfaces of continents are concerned,
the machinery of English, while employing the troublesomely ambiguous definite
article for one of them, is just as deft as Loglan is at designating mass
individuals.  The point is, that Loglan, being optionally trobriandish at
just this point, allows us to invoke these same companionable creatures
everywhere.  English, as usual, confines us to a select group of predicates
for its massifying operations \ldots thus convincing us, once again, of the
metaphysical differences between categories of designata on the basis of
grammatical differences between their designations.

I find that in most of the Loglan sentences that people write to me in letters
there are signs of a strong tendency to favor [le] over [loi] in translating
the writer's native `the'.
     {\ednote Nothing has changed.  Note that Institute Loglan doesn't have
     [lei].}
			  This is true even in cases where an easy analysis of
the writer's intentions clearly indicates that he really meant to impart to
me the mass sense of the English definite article.  Here is an example from
a recent letter by William Mengarini:  [ku'i ca le nu de pilno loi sinxa kei
de bapli le tinju'i .a le tcidu le se cmesni].
     {\ednote The place structure of `fosli', rendered here `bapli', is: x1
     forces victim x2 to do action x3, with x2 raised out of x3.}
					     (I have ``de-punctuated''
Mengarini's Loglan.)  I translate this observation as follows:  `However,
when someone y uses signs ([loi sinxa]), y forces the (particular) listener
(I have in mind) or the (particular) reader (I have in mind) to (the
particular) hunt (I have in mind) for the (particular) designatum (I have in
mind).'  Putting aside the faulty existential quantification of [de], which
I think Bill must have meant to be a universal ([ro de] = `any someone y')
else a corrected version of the sentence is true trivially, I think that {\it
all} the instances of [le] in this sentence, and there are five
     {\ednote {\it sic}; four}
				     of them, ought probably to have been
rendered with [loi].  The reasons in the case of the first, fourth and fifth
     {\ednote {\it sic}; first, third, and fourth}
                                                   instances of [le] are a
bit complicated; let me skip over them.  But in the case of [le tinju'i], it
is obvious that the sense of the English phrase `the listener' that Bill
intended to convey is not one of concrete individual designation --- not, in
short ``the particular listener I have in mind whose address I could give
you if you asked for it'' --- but the mass listener: he who listens, i.e.,
any appropriate manifestation of the listening-creature: in short, a
[loi]-creature.  Similarly, [le tcidu] must have been meant to designate the
mass reader and not any particular part of him.  To me, these are both very
clearly species-concepts.  A proper definition of their boundaries would
allow us to sutdy the roles of listeners and readers in the sign-process [loi
sinxa pruce].

Now we all know that English {\it does} use the definite article to convey
just this sense of the mass-individual, very often in a species or species-like
context.  ``The'' lion is ``the'' king of beasts (though some are cubs and
therefore princelings) and ``the'' giraffe does have ``the'' longest neck
amongst ``the'' extant herbivores.  Yet we are apparently tempted, somehow,
to forget this fact about our language when we see the word `the', or feel
it ringing in our minds, {\it even} in the context of essaying ``logical''
translation.  For most often, I've observed, even the cleverest loglanists
persist in translating their English `the's with [le].  And the more
hard-headed and ``logical'' they are the more firmly they seem to do so.
Perhaps we English-speaking logicians feel that [le] is the ``fundamental''
meaning of `the'; and that its [loi]-sense is derivative, poetic, hyperbolical,
or even ``illogical''.  But surely it requires no great feat of analysis to
see that the `the' in Mengarini's `the listener' does not have even the same
kind of designation-building fucntion as English `the' in `the man who came
to dinner'.  What this listener who listened to my sign productions last
night did with them, and what the particular reader who will (probably) read
these words while sitting in a house with a particular address in northern
Iowa (which I could give you) will do with them when he reads them, is, to
be sure, relevant to Mr. Mengarini's assertion about how we sign-users force
people to hunt for designata.  In particular, such facts are data about the
speech-performances of our [loi]-creatures.  But sentences which report data
do not often have the same ontological status as the assertions which may be
supported by those data.  They do not, in particular, often deal with the
same types of individuals \ldots any more than a remark about the wonderfully
itinerant lion who {\it literally} travelled all over Africa ([le cinfo poi
pu se stufa'i loi remna piro la .afrikas.]) deals with the same kind of
individual as the {\it Felis leo} who is also ``found all over Africa.''
One kind of individual is often bagged in skin.  For example, both [le cinfo]
and Mengarini's [le tinju'i] will almost certainly turn out to be skin-bagged
when and if we find them.  The other is bagged in \ldots well, one of those
marvellously accommodating verbal nets that are made and case at will by the
user of the [loi]-operator.  In fact, some things in nature --- and some very
important things, like the phenomena of evolution --- are probably impossible
to think about without first netting them as [loi]-creatures.

In sum it is wise for the loglanist to watch his `the-sub-[le]'s' and his
`the-sub-[loi]'s' when attempting even the gentler ontological slopes of
Loglan.  Remember this.  Whenver you use Loglan [le] for one of those
unsubscripted (and thus unanalyzed) English `the's of yours, you are committing
yourself (on the terms of the Loglan game if not the English) to answering
the question `Who and where is this particular ``[le cinfo]'' that you're
talking about?' If you don't want to expose yourself to this occasionally
awkward question \ldots.  If, indeed, you find on inspection that you couldn't
possibly answer it even if you were asked to (Ask a biologist for the
``address'' of {\it Homo sapiens}!), the chances are that you ``meant'' the
kind of `the' that requires translation by the [loi]-operator.

	{\ednote Here's a paragraph from Loglan 1 (3rd ed., 1975) p. 96; it
	appears unchanged in the 4th ed. (1989) on pp. 187-88):

	Before we leave mass descriptions it is worth pointing out that the
	languages of some preliterate peoples apparently employ the ide of
	mass description as the elementary meaning of their basic words.
	Thus the Trobriand Islanders are reported to place this interpretation
	on all their nouns; whence the curious world-view arises that what
	we would call a single instance of a thing is, to them, nothing but
	a part, or a re-appearance, or a manifestation of the same, massive
	individual thing.  Thus every rabbit is just an appearance of Mr.
	Rabbit; every yam just another manifestation of Mr. Yam; every baby
	just a part of Mr.  Baby all over again.}

-- 
John Cowan					cowan@ccil.org
		e'osai ko sarji la lojban.