Re: Dvorak (& Lojban)

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

Jorge:
>- Is he tall?
>-No.
>-No? How tall is he?
>- 1m
>-Ah, you're right, he's not tall then.
>
>- Is he inept?
>-No.
>-No? How inept is he?
>-I told you he is not inept, why do you ask how inept he is?
>
>If you say that someone is not tall, it still makes sense to ask
>how tall he is. Why? Because the sense of tall in "how tall"
>is different.

I will first note thatthis discussion is overlapping the na'e/na discussion
slightly, and presume that others might see how without going on at length.

I think your examples betray the follies of English in several ways.
Inept has a built in negation, that one runs afoul of when one plays
with teh word.  I also think that the English phrasings make the case
worse than it is.  Let me rephrase:

-Is he vertically-long by the typical standard?
-No.
-No? What is his degree of tallness by some objective measurement standard?
-1m
-A, you're right, he's not tall then.

-Is he ept (to'e inept) by the typical standard?
-No.
-No? What is his degree of his eptness by some objective measurement standard?
-1 eptic
-A, you're right, he's not ept then.

English does not have a way of expressing degrees of negation.  If something
is "not" something, that is all that can typically be said.  Likewise
if something is "non-something" or in this case "in-something".  Indeed
There are no international metric units for negated measureables %^)
Yet we can talk aboit degrees of failure, and fuzzy logic to some extent
can talk about the degree to which something is ept or inept.

IN short you could have given the same problem without branching into
aptitude, by using "short".  "How short is he?" is equally troublesome, since
we do not have a measure of shortness that is independent of a measure of
longness.  We similarly cannot measure ineptness, but perhaps can measure
aptitude, so English SHOULD allow us to measure inaptitude using the same
scale as aptitude.

lojbab