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

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

> >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.
>
> Why is it possible?  It may be nonsense to have an "inappropriate
> value", but I don't think we can know this.

It is possible because there are no constraints on the selbri
we can define in Lojban. You can have a predicate "female
ape x1 throttles male antelope x2", or "x1 is abstract", or
whatever you like.

> I don't think that exsiting human languages make concrete/abstract a
> mandatory category, and I am not sure that Lojban needs to either
> (I suspect that "curious green ideas sleep furiously" involves a mixing of
> concrete and abstract that you would find inapprpriate).

You are still missing the point. First of all, where does this
"mandatory category" stuff come from? I don't know what you're
on about. Secondly, the very reason that "colourless green ideas
sleep furiously" is precisely that the selectional restrictions
of these words are being violated: the properties of ideas are
incompatible with the properties of sleepers.

Since your ability to miss the point knows no bounds, let me preempt
a redherring that you would probably include in your response to
this point: I have nowhere said that sentences like
"colourless green ideas sleep furiously" or "mi viska lo nu
broda" are ungrammatical or ill-formed. They just have a weird
meaning. There is nothing wrong with them having a weird meaning,
so long as you realize the meaning is weird, and so long
as the weird meaning is the one you intended.

> >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,
>
> Such a distinction CAN be made, but MUST it be made?

I don't know what you mean by this question.

> >and John has proposed that
> >a nu is an abstract thing, while usage indicates that a nu is
> >a concrete thing
>
> And Lojbab thinks it is ambivalent because it depends too much on what you
> mean by abstracty and concrete.

I can't make any sense of that statement.
It seems that you don't have an articulable view of what "nu" means.

> >> >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.
>
> The "if they can" is a key factor.  Most who care cannot, and
> without their inputs, nothing gets resolved finally.

Nor should it get resolved with finality. We are past the
baselining stage, and have moved on to trying to understand
the language. What should and does happen is that matters
get resolved without finality.

> It also cannot be said that when the possibility of confusion is
> not even being tested on the majority of people skilled enough in
> the language and in logic to become unconfused.

???? I can't parse that!

> >> >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.
>
> I think I now understand that what you meant is that "ni" is homonymous
> and "jei" is homonymous, where I was taking your earlier statement as
> implying some kind of mutual overlapping of form and meaning.
>
> I do not know why you are usingthe term "homonym" as opposed to the term
> "polysemy" that has been previously used for this issue, and therefore am
> suspecting that you means something unlike what we have called polysemy.

I am using the term "homonym" because it is a standard term for
this phenomenon, and because I do not recall any lojbo tradition
of using "polysemy" instead. For all practical purposes,
homonymy and polysemy amount to the same thing.

> Several Lojban cmavo are indeed polysemous.

I was not aware of recognized cases of polysemy where the polysemy
does not correlate with a syntactic difference (as e.g. with the
different functions of {jai} and {nai}).

> Furthermore, we have taken the lexicographers view that all words
> are to some degree polysemous. The meanings of a word in its
> various usages could be mapped to semantic space as a kind of
> scatter-plot rather than as a strict point, and the word "meaning"
> is an area of that semantic space that encompasses all the usages.
> (Of course this definition implies that usage determiones meaning,
> which is why I insist on having more usage before we decide what
> people mean.)

If this is what you mean by polysemy, then let us speak of
homonymy instead.

Suppose {xlura} were a homonym, xlura1 meaning "flower, bloom",
and xlura2 meaning "flowering plant". Then {lo`i xlura} would
be ambiguous, according to whether it means the set of all
flowers, or the set of all flowering plants. But if instead
xlura was not a homonym, but meant "x1 is a flower or a flowering
plant", then {lo`i xlura} would unambiguously mean the set
of everything that is a flower or a flowering plant.

> I believe that ni and jei have in practice fairly nebulous meanings right now,

Only you seem to find jei nebulous. To every other participant
in the debate it is perfectly clear and crisp. Ni is nebulous
in a certain way, but its nebulousness is unrelated to its
contradictory definition.

> compounded by sumti raising errors that us sloppy English speakers habitually
> promulgate.

You keep on mentioning these alleged sumti-raising errors, but
if at any point you showed them to be relevant, I missed that
posting. Could you reexplain? I can't see what they have to do
with ni and jei.

> I think that usage will gravitate towards a specific meaning,
> which meaning for jei is the one where Ch 11, 7.3) wil come to be considered
> invalid sumti raising.

Which one is that? (Our web connection is down again so I can't
check.)

> But I contend that the existience of invalid sumti raising itself
> does not change the true meaning of the word.  It represents a
> known and common usage error, one that even the refgrammar author
> is not immune from.  And in the refgrammar examples you think show
> polysemy, it is NOT that "jei" or "ni" is polysemous, but rather
> that the abstract phrase or even sentence in which they occur is
> polysemous because of the erroneous unmarked raising.

I'm not quite sure what you mean. If one of the meanings can be
seen as sumti-raising it would be the one where jei means a
truthvalue and ni an amount - both definitions pretty standard
from the ma`oste, and given explicitly in the refgram.

If by some contorted reasoning you are saying that the indirect
question use is the illicit one, then I would like to know how
you reach this conclusion. When used, jei has always had the
"whether" meaning. So given that usage conflicts with the
official definitions, and that the refgram endorses both sides
of the conflict, how do you manage to decide that one is correct
and one is incorrect?

Note that that ni/jei thread was asking which of the two meanings
of ni/jei was correct. IIRC noone was arguing that the homonymy
answer was desirable; it just seemed to be the de facto situation.

> >> >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
 ar
> >> several people including myself who are as competent as Jorge.  But most of
> >e
> >> 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.
>
> I think that that is as much a factor aswhat you call "facility".
> I would saythat John Cowan has the greatest mastery of those features  that
> you seem concerned with - the typoe of stuff covered by the refgrammar.

John is of course an authority on the baseline, but Jorge is an
authority on unsolved problems (= valid questions to which there is
no established answer). As the baseline is well documented, thanks to
John, and the unsolved problems are not, I think the knowledge stored
in Jorge's mind is more precious than that stored in anyone else's.

> Nick is a bit weaker, but has the linguistics theory to back up
> his weakness with some greater insights.  I am a bit weaker still
> because of my lack of rigor in training orr thinking about some
> aspects of the language.

I know lots of linguistic theory, and it doesn't avail me much
in matters to do with Lojban.

> Butthen Nick has the best mastery of lexicon, by virtue of his lujvo-making
> work.  I am second best there, because I know the gismu and their intended
> range of meaning better than Nick does, but I do not know the lujvo or the
> lujvo-making algorithm.  Nora is si,milar to me, though with a better mind
> for the rigor and less command of the lexicon through less usage.  Cowan
> is overall a weaker Lojbanist because he by his own admission has little
> command of the content-word lexicon.

I am not sure even here whether you are correct. I can well
believe that Nick, you and Nora can remember and recognize more
words than others can, but I am not at all sure that you are
as aware of the patterns and systems and anomalies in the lexicon
as, say, Jorge has demonstrated himself to be.

Put it this way: you might score higher than Jorge on a
Lojban proficiency test, but Jorge would get the higher grade
in the course "the structure of Lojban" in the linguistics
department of the University of Lojbanistan. Indeed, it should
really be Jorge who teaches the course, if we could get him
seconded from the department of Physics and Astronomy.

> Jorge has probably by now passed Nick up bit a good margin in
> total usage. But he has by his own admission assumed several
> dissident usage positions that weaken his understandability to
> others.  His amalytical capability for the kinds of issues that you
> are interested in is probably as good as anyones, but I am less
> sure of his command of lexicon, and simply haven't read as much of
> his stuff as I have Nick;s in order to compare his sophistication.
> But as I said, Twery ranked high in his usage because of another
> factor - a language "instinct" or feel fro what is important and
> what is right.

An instinct which my instinct tells me is probably wrong. - I'm
not referring to Dave Twery in particular, but rather to get
feelings about style that are professed by various people
(notably Nick) without immersing themselves in a deeper understanding
of the language.

> I think that those people I cite as the best
> Lojbanists are the ones who show this internalized instinct - a
> Lojbanic "style" that seems specific to and appropriate to the
> language, as perceived by others.  Nick has this as well, as does
> Veijo, Twery, and I think myself when I am focussed on using the
> language - and Shoulson and Derzhinski and Topic.  I haven't read
> enough of Jorge's Lojban to opine wrt to his usage, but the factors
> by which we have disagreed prevent me from reading his texts with
> that kind of natural smoothness that I can experience when reading
> others.  And so I have not yet attributed to him that instinctive
> "feel" for the language that I attribute to others. I have to admit
> that this instinctive "feel" is totally subjective, and is
> somewhatof an indider's club kind of thing - the people aI trust
> to judge how good someone's Lojban is by this standard, are people
> I have attributed high marks in this area themselves.

I too feel that this style exists, and I strongly disapprove of it.
It is unnecessarily normative, is excessively malglico, fails
to exploit anything like the full range of constructions that
Lojban affords, and above all is done with at best a beginner's
level understanding of the language.

> I attribute
> high analystical skill to you, And, but you by your own statement
> are not yetthat sophisticated a user of the language (though I
> think you discount your skill too much), and hence your jdugement
> of Jorge's relative mastery carries less weight with me than Nick's
> or Cowan's would.

Given your criteria for according esteem, you are quite correct
in giving less weight to my judgement. And conversely, because
I perceive that you do not understand many technical aspects of
Lojban and language, I correspondingly give less weight to your
judgement. But we are probably agreed on who ranks where on
the scales determined by our respective criteria for estimation.

> But I am not sure of any of this - it is all quite subjective, and I will be
> the last person to actually try to publically rank all the good Lojbanists
> by skill level with any claim that "this is how it is" or even that it is
> any mnore than how I am feeling at the moment.  I might someday devise
> some criterai for my private use, but you can bet that I would never share
> by evaluations with the list %^)

We are both "anti-Cowans" in our tendency to publicly speak our
mind. I'm sure you would blurt out your private list at some time
or other. I doubt anyone would take offence at anything you say.

> And indeed, I am not sending this message to the list, but only to
> you, lest what I have already said be taken as a judgement.  I
> don't want people thinking that Lojban is going around sitting in
> judgement of how good they are as Lojbanists, because I don't
> indeed do this (but rather was provoked into starting on this path
> by answering your post here).
>
> >I bet there's a widespread presumption that polysemy (or homonymy
> >between words in same selma`o) is not allowed.
>
> Now you confuse me again.  I thought I had the idea that homonymy was a
> feature of a single word rather than a mutuality thing, based on your earlier
> statements about ni and jei, yet this contradicts that interpetation.

homonyms: words with same sound & different meaning

I gave a fuller definition in another message.

> If you are referring to words in the same selma'o having overlapping meaning,

I'm not.

> then indeed there are some selma'o where this is the case. su'u for example
> is a superset of all the abstractors that exist and those that might exist
> amd we already knwo that nu overlapps the event types.  I contend that
> the x1 of nu and the x1 of du'u are indeed quite similar, but that the x1
> of du'u does not stand alone but is always seen as a reflection of its text
> (x2 of du'u) whereas the nu variety is focussed more on the manifestation
> and possible/actual time/space signature.  But I am not sure that I could
 prove
> this or that it would stand up to analysis of usage.

I can understand this definition of nu. I will respond to it
some other time.

> >> 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
> >--More--
> >> 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.
> >
>
> What do you mean "exclude"?

>From the ranks of those whose opinions count.

> I think that skill in Lojban is a ni
> abstraction and not a jei abstraction.  It is an open ended scale, with
> even the lowest level of commitment to the language making someone a
 "Lojbanist"
> in my book.  But I will trust Nick's judgements over Ashley's as a matter of
> course unless I have spent a lot of time analyzing the latter, or unless
> what he says rings true with me instinctively (this has happened several times
> and there are several Lojbanists who have high ni certu la lojban in my book
> without having fully joined into the language project).

I would trust Ashley because what he said rang true with me
"instinctively"... (i.e. I agreed with him)

> >This is your definition of Lojban skill and quality of usage. There
> >are others, at least if not more Lojbanic.
>
> Any definition of skill in a language which does not include communicative
> ability seems meaningless to me, because a language that does not communicate
> is not a language.  Communicative ability MUST be measured by others who seek
> to understand the communications and who may or may not get feedback as to
> the success of the communication.

Currently, the best way to communicate successfully in Lojban is
to use the prevailing style, be as malglico as everyone else,
and ignore niceties of logical meaning, so that they don't
distract your interlocutor when they use their powerful
pragmatic abilities to grock your meaning.

Unless Lojban is defined as this beginner's level pidgin
fumbling, then communicative ability is not proof of skill
in Lojban.

> If your definition does not include this as its prinary factor then I think
> you are talking about Lojban other than as a linguist.

I hardly ever wear my linguist's hat when talking about Lojban.

> (Reminder that this was NOT sent to the list).

Which bits don't you want to be public. There are some bits
of general interest.

--And