Re: still on nu & fasnu...

[And Rosta <a.rosta@UCLAN.AC.UK>]

Lojbab:
> >Of course, if "fasnu" means an actual event, then what I oroginally
> >said was correct, and {lo nu broda cu fasnu} is false.
>
> Which it cannot be since that is the definition of fasnu and nu (both).
> This is an echo of  ckaji/ka and klani/ni

If by definition {lo nu broda cu fasnu} must be true, that places
a constraint on the possible meaning of nu and fasnu. For example,
it means either that fasnu does not mean "a happening" or that
"nu" does not mean "an event-type".
We ought to check whether you are correctly reporting the content
of the refgrammar, but I assume you are.

> However, since I am totally lost in this stuff about events and types and
> instantitions thereoof, I will give up and return to the perhaps
> contradictory statements that the refgram is baselined and also that
> x1 of fasnu is a nu-event (which is partof the baselined gismu list).
>
> I am similarly begging out of your zo quote stuff, but my usage will
> likely continue be that mi bacru/cusku zo .arg.  and if I say it twice,
> I am likely to have no qualms about re zo .arg.  not that I will necessarily
> say this myself.

It is somewhat hypocritical of you to fail to base your usage on
the avowed principles of Lojban, after you have in the past
castigated me for being willfully deviant.

Anyway, {re zo .arg.} is grammatical. It is meaningless only on
one definition of {zo}. If usage legitimizes {re zo} then we will
know that {zo} has a different definition.

> Your discussion has simply gotten to arcane and out of touch with human
> communication for me.  I am not used to even trying to be rigorous about
> the distinction between a word and its manifestation and this affects
> both zo and li ci.  You are not even managing to convince me that the
> discussion is important, much less that there is something meaningful being
> said.

It does no harm to abstain from the debates. If you want to actually
argue against them altogether, that makes a difference to what
Lojban is. If the principles and basic conventions governing the
Lojban speech community are already in place, and we are trying
to build a community that actually conforms to those principles
and conventions, then we need some kind of "usage police". Now
usage is more likely to flourish if it is unpoliced, but on the
other hand the unpoliced usage is less likely to conform to the
starting principles and conventions.

> >> I make no sense. Your reactions suggest that we are close to
> >> getting back to the ancient discussion about needing lo tanxe that
> >> led to enormous largely pointless volume 2 years ago (indeed it was
> >> 2 years ago Thanksgiving that we had something like 200 postings in
> >> a single day on the list or some similar nonsense).
> >
> >I don't think it was pointless. No conclusions were reached, but
> >now we come to it again, I feel that more progress is being made
> >and that red-herrings are more easily spottable.
>
> I and others dropped out of the last one because it simply is not what we
> want to do with the language.  I tried to distil conclusions from the
> last round primarily because I needed to be sure that anything significant
> made it into the baseline book.  That is no longer in question.

The issues are different now. Noone has been arguing for anything
that would conflict with the baseline, except perhaps for
clarification where the baseline itself is inherently contradictory.

> >I realize that to many these discussions are arcane, pedantic and
> >pointless.
>
> I am beginning to feel that all of them are, until we get more usage.

By what criteria would Lojban be deemed by you to have succeeded?
If your answer is " adynamic and sizable speech community using
Lojban", explain what counts as "using Lojban".

> >However, I don't see how Lojban can fulfil its claim
> >to be what it says it is (logical, consistent with design principles,
> >etc.), if we don't have these discussions to ensure that it does
> >fulfil its claim.
>
> That argument worked before we declared the baseline.  Now by dictum the
> language prescription is done, and the language is what it is.

So what is the language, then?

> Until we
> get 5 years of usage history, I will question whether we have any idea
> whether Lojban is or is not fulfilling anything.

So suppose we do nothing, wait five years, and find out that it
isn't fulfillinf anything, but might have had we not done nothing,
would you then sit back in satisfaction?

> >It's not surprising that in dealing with tricky problems, and
> >with pc the only professional logician among us, we end up
> >going round the houses somewhat.
>
> And pc's silence tells me quite clearly that HE doesn't think the issue is
> important (and/or decidable).

Of course it's not that important. I participate in Lojban
only because I enjoy it, not because it's important. If I
less selfishly cared more about things that are important I
should instead be pouring my energies into exposing human rights
violations around the world, or something like that.

> I think in the future when we start ducking into logic, I will
> simply defer to him.  I after all am the person who got a "D" in a
> logic class that could not be failed (it was a mastery learning
> course, and I was on an incomplete until I finished enough to get
> a "D" and thereby pass and graduate, si8nce it was my last required
> course).

I got an A but it was a baby logic course. On my Montague Semantics
course, the most incomprehensible one I ever took, I got a D too.
But I've always been a bad learner.

--And