Re: GLI Re: What the *%$@ does "nu" mean?

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

Lojbab:
> >Again I think you're responding to the wrong point. While the
> >philopsophy of perception is interesting, the relevant point
> >remains the distinction between concrete and abstract entities.
> >Even if you believe that viska, or zgana, or whatever can have
> >an abstract percept sumti, the fact remains that any te sumti
> >that must be concrete cannot be a nu, if a nu is an event-type.
>
> Ah, but Lojban does not prescribe that there is inherently a concrete/
> abstract dichotomy in indivdual te sumti.  I may not know what it means
> to say "li mu cu djuno" or "le nu klama" cu jubme" But this is "just
 semantics"
> and Lojban for the most part eschews the prescription of semantics
> (at least partially because the only way we have to talk about semantics is
> in terms of English which has its own semantics assumptions).

The fact remains that it IS possible for a selbri to have a
sumti that must be concrete or must be abstract, just as it
is possible for a selbri to have a sumti that must be male or
must be female.

This is still straying from the point, which is that a distinction
can be made between concrete things, which exist in space-time,
and abstract things, which don't, and John has proposed that
a nu is an abstract thing, while usage indicates that a nu is
a concrete thing.

> >> >There was a long thread on this a month or two ago, which I did
> >> >not participate in.
> >>
> >> And which like all  the rest petered out after much volume with no
> >> resolution and obviously just as much confusion among at least as
> >> many people as when we started.
> >
> >I'm not sure that anyone except you remains confused.
>
> I'm not sure that more than half a dozen people even read the posts, as
> indeed I think is usually the case in these hypertechnical discussions.

I don't see that that matters. Those who care participate, if they
can. Those who don't care, don't.

> >The debate was resolved. It became clear that ni and jei have
> >contradictory definitions. Chris is probably right that we must
> >conclude that ni and jei are homonymous.
>
> I do not see how this can be even plausible, since ni is open-ended and
> jei is close-ended.

Ni is homonymous. Jei is homonymous. What do you find implausible
about this. Homonyms are words with the same form and different
meaning, or, alternatively, are word-forms corresponding to
more than one meaning.

> >> Yet I have yet to see a Lojban statement using jei that I did not
> >> understand.
> >
> >I don't see what understandability has got to do with it.
>
> Since Lojban semantics is largely undefined, understandability is everything.

The refgrammar is pretty clear on the meanings of jei. Not so
clear on ni.

> >For simple mastery of the language, Jorge is certainly the
> >authority of authorities.
>
> I contend (and suspect that Jorge would agree) that Nick remains supreme
> due to relative fluency.  Given open-ended amounts of time, I think there are
> several people including myself who are as competent as Jorge.  But most of
 the
> rest of us don't have that time.

I suspect that for you, "mastery" means remembering the glosses on
the gismu list and remembering the phrase-structure grammar fairly
intimately, and perhaps being able to compose grammatical
sentences at speed.

But for that, "mastery" is a misnomer. I was taking it to imply
broad knowledge and understanding of the language. In my experience
of Lojbanists - this list, plus a very pleasant and entertaining
few days in the company of Nick - Nick has the greatest "facility"
("mastery" in the sense I attribute to you), while Jorge has the
greatest mastery in the more appropriate sense of the word.

No amount of modest disclaimers from Jorge will dissuade me from
this opinion.

> >Anyway, there are certain established but possibly unwritten
> >conventions, such as the absence of homonymy in Lojban.
>
> I am unsure by this wehether you mean polysemy of an individual word
> or two words sharing a single meaning.

Either. Noone has ever been able to satisfactorily draw a
distinction between them.

> If you mean an absence of polysemy, then I would say that there is no such
> principle regaridng the structure words of Lojban (as opposed to content
> words), and indeed we have several cmavo which are explicitly polysemous
> if analogical in some way in various grammatical contexts.  "nai" being
> one of the most obvious.
>
> I think that we have tried to MINIMIZE polysemy except where it is implicitly
> marked by differences in grammar.  But I don't think we have enough of a
> theory of Lojban semantics to eliminate polysemy, if indeed it is even
 possible
> in human language.

I bet there's a widespread presumption that polysemy (or homonymy
between words in same selma`o) is not allowed.

> >We have set no policy on what the riole of myself and
> >> anyone else who serves as an LLG editor of Lojban text will have as a
> >> prescriptive force (i.e. what kinds of errors we can/will reject) but I
 hope
> >> my role will be no greater than any other person who copuld speak the
 langua
> >> as well as me.
> >
> >How do you judge how well someone can speak L?
>
> I would be hard pressed to come up with a short answer to that especially
 since
> I have not done much LOjban judging myself in recent months.
>
> I suspect that it has to do with how often they make 1) overt errors of
> grammar or word choice (including mastery of the gismu list) - and especially
> the basics since I don't expec that anyone has a parser built into their
> brain yet for complex grammar 2) successfully communicate with other
> Lojban speakers who can comment intelligently on what they have read/heard
> without a lot of negotiation  in either Lojban or English 3) successfully
> understand and still manage to detect and correct errors of others.

As I thought.

> >> I am perhaps a little harsher towards Ashley because, whereas you have
> >> written texts in the language and more or less successfully communicated in
> >> the language, you have some credibility as a Lojban speaker.
> >
> >You repeatedly apply this criterion. It seems to be little more
> >than some kind of initiation rite; a sign of insiderhood.
>
> yes it is.  Until you use the language, you have nothing at stake
> and little reason to empathize with those others who have used and
> are using the language. We know that those who have used tha
> language or who have attempted to learn the language in the past
> have a different mindset towards the language itself, and towards
> the possibility of change in the language, and towards authority
> over the language than do those who have not yet made some overt
> commitment.

This is true. But you make this the case by definition, by excluding
those who have not learnt sufficient Lojban and have not spent
sufficient time using it.

> I think this similarly reflects the attitudes of native
> speakers of human languages to "reform efforts" as well as the
> resistance of Esperantists to those who would change THAT language.

Sort of.

> >The quality of my writing about Lojban has not been improved by my
> >writing in Lojban, and the sensible things Ashley has been saying
> >are not any the less sensible for his not having posted
> >texts in Lojban.
>
> I disagree with reagrd to your Lojban postings, but quality
> presumably is subkjective.  The types of "errors" that get
> discussed in these messages I consider to be quite incidental to
> quality of Lojban usage among the present set of speakers.  When
> we have a few hundred speakers who have used the language and who
> established the types of things discussed in these polemics
> through extensive usage sahred by all of them, then a user who
> fails to follow one of them THEN becomes in some way marked as a
> less skilled Lojbanist.  Right now, Lojban skill is marked by what
> you achieve in communicating in the language and not by the rules
> that you fail to follow (though of course failure to follow some
> portion of the rules renders you unintelligible).

This is your definition of Lojban skill and quality of usage. There
are others, at least if not more Lojbanic.

More tomorrow.

--And