intemperate response to Lojbab on situation types

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

> >> but it IS possible to look at that point event as having substructure.
> >> So nu mi co'a citka could be ANY of the 4 Aristotelian event types.
> >It is entirely possible that something can be conceptualized either as a
> >point event or as an activity, but equally the same thing can be
> >conceptualized as a blob of red cabbage.  So I don't dispute what you
> >say, but don't find it relevant to the issue of the semantics of ZAhO.
> Since the semantics of ZAhO are DEFINED in terms of the Aristotelian
> event types, they are quite relevant.

What is irrelevant is one's ability to conceptualize X as being of more
than one event type.

> Implicitly, to use "ca'o" for example means that you are NOT describing
> a point event, and tends to imply that you are describing an activity or
> a state. za'o and co'u vs. mu'o, referring to implicit differences from
> a natural ending point, imply a process, since for all other event types,
> the natural ending point is indistinguishable from any other point in the
> event.

Quite so.

> > I can believe {koa mue i koa puu i koa zirpu i koa brifu i koa cecmu i
> > mua cui cai} - but so what?
> I have no idea what "ko'a mu'e" or "*ko'a pu'u" might mean

They are both grammatical (as far as I know), and both have obvious
meanings. {koa mue} means "It is a point event abstraction" and {koa puu}
means "It is a process abstraction". If you look up NU in you cmavo
list you will find these two cmavo.

> (nor mu'acu'icai - intensely not-particularly exemplary???).

{mua cui} means "omitting examples". According to maoste, at least.
So {mua cui cai} = "very much omitting examples". {cui} is not the
scale of exemplariness.

> >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).
> OK, be picky.  Lojban predicates are textual representations of what we
> call relationships, and you seem to be calling situations.

You misunderstand. Predicates are logical, not lexical/textual, objects.
Whether you define them extensionally or intensionally, they still
don't have aktionsart. I call (suo re place) predicates relationships
too.

> >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.
> Why not?  Have you no imagination?

A bicycle is not a racehorse, however good your imagination and your
ability to view it as a racehorse. A kiss is not a state.

> I picture statuary of two lovers embracing, and have no problem viewing
> their act as lo za'i cinba (the statues are kissing, in addition to them
> being la'e a perhaps more transient event of kissing)

I realize that you have no problem viewing their act as lo za,i cinba.
That is precisely the problem. If {ti za,i} is true than {ti nuncinba}
is not (assuming {nuncinba} means "is a kiss"). {ti cinba za,i} or
{ti za,i zei cinba} might be fair descriptions.

> >  I can't retrace
> >your reasoning by which you reached the multiply erroneous conclusion
> >"all Lojban predicates are telic and durative".  Please try again.
> All Lojban predicates (or what they represent if you prefer) are BY
> DEFINITION optionally seen as having telic and durative properties.  Or
> in Aristotelian terms, there are no arbitrary reasons why one cannot
> view any predicate "situation" as a state, process, activity, or point
> event.

I don't see predicates as representing anything. No predicate, as far
as I can see, has telic or durative properties, let alone by definition.

There are indeed no arbitrary reasons why one cannot view any situation
as a state, process, activity, or point event. Nor are there
non-arbitrary reasons why one cannot view any situation as a state,
process, activity, or point event, though there are non-arbitrary reasons
why it can be difficult to view some situations as a state, process,
activity, or point event. And there most emphatically are non-arbitrary
reasons why certain situations are not states, or not processes, or
not activities, etc.
You seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that situation types
are somehow privileged, are somehow different from other objects. They're
not. You can view cabbage as gas rather than solid. But cabbage is still
solid. You can view laughter as a state. But laughter is still activity.

You seem to feel not confused on these matters, yet I can't make head
nor tail of what you say. Could you, then, point me to a discussion of
these matters, whether it is in the refgrammar or in non-lojban linguistic
or logicophilosophical literature? I don't mean that as a test of your
correctness, for I cannot myself now think of a text that I could refer
you to, in order that you might see things my way.

> >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,
> This is by definition NOT a membership requirement in most any Lojbanic
> class (the x1 of pruce being an obvious exception).

Forbidding a definition of any class from including a requirement that
members be processes is as stupid as forbidding definitions from
including a requirement that members be, say, solid. A race running must
be dynamic and inherently bounded. Therefore it is a process. If it is
not dynamic and inherently bounded then it's not a race running, and of
course it's not 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.
> Then in that case, virtually all Lojban predicates are
> "-oidal-ish-thingys" and not equivalent to their apparent English
> counterparts, because they do NOT inherently restrict to processes or
> states in internal structure.

I'll set aside the problem of you trying to view predicates as processes,
etc. If you mean to say that all categories in Lojban are
oidal-ish-thingies then that view is too nonsensical to be correct, and
I must conclude that you have misunderstood something.

> (But I don't think that English words are so restrictive either - it is
> just more unusual in English to look at things in unusual ways of this
> sort).

I will not debate this, since our object of study is Lojban, not English.

> I can choose to talk about "Ted" (in Lojban) and NOT recognize the
> evolving nature of Ted, but rather see only the steady-state properties,
> and thus think of Ted as a "state". Or I can refer to the repetitive
> nature of the substructure of Ted (laps, paces) and think of Ted as an
> "activity".  Or I can be thinking about how Ted is simply so incidental
> to the eternity of the universe, that Ted is a "point event".

Yes yes yes yes. All this I have said repeatedly. What you haven't grasped
is that when you think of Ted as a state, or as an activity, you are not
thinking of Ted as a race running.

> But recognizing these different aspects of Ted does not change the fact
> that Ted still is the same race-running.

Ted is still Ted. That is not at issue.

> I could easily analyze Fred, which is "lo nu cinba" as either of the
> four types by choosing to recognize different aspects as preeminent.

I have yet to encounter a coherent and comprehensible account of what
"nu" means, so I can't comment on this.

> ("Aspect" does refer etymologically to the way one looks at something so
> this seems quite appropriate. telicity and duration are thus aspects of
> a Lojbanic "situation" and not normally "properties" of it.)

You're right about the meaning of "aspect", which is why when linguists
are being careful with their terminology they will generally avoid
calling this phenomenon "aspect", using instead terms like "situation
type" or "aktionsart". Telicity and durativity falls under the latter
rather than under "aspect", since they involve properties of the
situation rather than the way one looks at it. "Aspect" would then be
reserved for perfective/imperfective contrasts, which have to do with
the bit of the situation that is within the field of view.

I don't know how to take your statement "telicity and duration are thus
aspects of a Lojbanic "situation" and not normally "properties" of it".
Either it's straightforwardly incorrect, or a 'lojbanic "situation"'
has no connection with situations and has a meaning I can make no sense
of at all.

Coo. Mie And.