length

[Robin Turner <robin@BILKENT.EDU.TR>]

We seem to be getting down to one of those classic problems in reference /
categorisation  - "long" relative to what?  Classical set theory regards
the adj.+noun set as the intersection of the set referred to by the
adjective and the set referred to by the noun; thus "pink elephant" would
be the intersection of the set of pink things with the set of elephants.
This does not work for scalar adjectives, however, since "small galaxy" is
not the intersection of the set of small things with the set of galaxies,
but something like "the subset of galaxies which are small relative to the
normal size of a galaxy".

With "long", we therefore have two ideas: long as in "2 metres long", and
long as in "longer than the average / what you'd expect."  "Length", I
think, only refers to the first sense.

Robin

>>At 21:04 03/10/97 -0300, you wrote:
>>> cu'u la lojbab
>>> >All measureable objects have an amount of longness (which may
>>>>also be identical to their amount of shortness).
>>>
>>>I'm not sure I'm understanding what you mean. Could you
>>>translate into Lojban? I suppose you are not saying that:
>>>
>>>        ro mitre cu ckaji le ka clani
>>>        Every measurable object has the property of being long.
>>>
>>>That, to me, is the same as saying:
>>>
>>>        ro mitre cu clani
>>>        Every measurable object is long.
>>>
>>>>A short object will have a small amount of
>>>>longness, and sure enough this corresponds to length.
>>>
>>>The trouble with this is that length is objective, while longness
>>>is subjective. A not very long river may have greater length
>>>than a very long road, for example. So here amount of longness
>>>would seem to go against length. We could say:
>>>
>>>                le dargu cu mutce le ka clani
>>>                The road is much in being long.
>>>
>>>                le rirxe cu toltce le ka clani
>>>                The river is little in being long.
>>>
>>>                le rirxe le dargu cu zmadu le ka mitre
>>>                The river is more than the road in length.
>>>
>>>> I am not sure
>>>>whether the amount of shortness increases or decreases with length, but it
>>>>would seem likely to be inverse of length %^).
>>>
>>>For me they are independent concepts. Measurable objects have
>>>length, by definition. In Lojban that sounds even more like a truism:
>>>
>>>                ro mitre cu ckaji le ka mitre
>>>
>>>but they don't necessarily have shortness or longness. These are
>>>subjective properties that depend much on the context. I wouldn't
>>>use objective words like {kilto} with subjective words like {clani}
>>>or {tordu}, unless it's metaphorical. Something like:
>>>
>>>                        ti ta kilto le ka clani
>>>                        This is a thousand times that in longness.
>>>
>>>is akin to something like:
>>>
>>>                       ti ta kilto le ka melbi
>>>                       This is a thousand times that in beauty.
>>>
>>>Both are unverifiable subjective statements. On the other hand,
>>>you can check, by measuring, a statement like:
>>>
>>>                       ti ta kilto le ka mitre
>>>                       This is a thousand times that in length.
>>>
>>>(A more precise wording would be:
>>>
>>>                       ti ta kilto le ka ke'a mitre makau
>>>                       This is a thousand times that in how many
>>>                        meters they measure.
>>>
>>>or whatever new cmavo was created to replace ke'a in such
>>>places. Also {makau} can be replaced with {li xokau}.)
>>>
>>> I know that the word "long" is sometimes used in an objective sense
>>>in English, as in "how long is this object?", but I don't think that the
>>>Lojban word {clani} can be used to translate the objective sense
>>>of English "long". It only has its subjective sense.
>>>
>>>co'o mi'e xorxes
>>>
>>>