Re: [engelang] Xorban: Properties - engelang messages

From: Mike S. <maikxlx@gmail.com>
To: engelang@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, October 26, 2012 8:12 PM
Subject: Re: [engelang] Xorban: Properties

On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 7:04 PM, John E Clifford <kali9putra@hidden.email> wrote:

From: Mike S. <maikxlx@gmail.com>

IMHO it's not inefficient because it's simply part of the meaning of a predicate whether a given argument place is extensional (special case) or intensional (general case, *not* contrastive case as suggested by the prospect of "doubling" predicates), just as it's part of a predicate's definition that "lo ka mamta" entails "lo ka fetsi" (special) whereas "lo ka prenu" does not (general wrt gender). No need to call attention to "fetsi" in the morphosyntax, even if Esperanto's creator felt otherwise.

By the way, what's your take on djuno and krici? How did those make it into L syntax without requiring distinct NU abstractors?

Bujt they generally require du'u with the usual exemptions, which exemptions are part of the reason why intensional places don't work, e.g., "I believe that" and "I believe the 39 Articles."

The point is that as part of a true statement, "se djuno" entails an actual state of affairs (extensional), while "se krici" admits any state of affairs, even a nonsensical or impossible one (intensional). There is a difference between a known and a belief, yet both are marked by the same abstractor. How did this slip through the cracks of Lojban if it's so important to mark the intension/extension distinction elsewhere in the syntax?

OK, I'll buy that fact about djuno/djn. That does not mean that the x1 is extensional. Indeed, it is an important aprt of the logic that the two are different in just this way. The other crucial fact about the x1 is that it is believed (and on adequate evidence, but that doesn't come in here). Knowledge and belief have the same abstractors because they are the same things, propositions (or whatever you will, so long as it works out right). No slip through; you just ignored what is going one. And perhaps saying it all out would make the point clearer. The claim "I know that p" entails p (not "that p", which isn't a statement), but "I believe that p" does not.

On top of this, deriving "hotness" from "hot" may be backwards. Perhaps what we want to do is start with "x1 is the heat of x2" as the primitive concept, and then a create polar or scalar metric primitives meaning plentiful/abundant and meager/scant. Then, we can define hotness as "abundant heat" and hot in turn as "having hotness". So maybe the solution to getting to your properties involves lexical design rather than syntax.

The hotness from hot derivation is Aristotelian and psychological, the Platonic and physical (and odd combination, I admit) would go a different way. But we are dealing with human languages, which got their concepts in place, before Plato and before age 4. So, we could start with perceived (or even metered) temperature, but that is not how human experience goes and it would be harder to teach. But the idea of three or so degree of hotness incorporated into a predicate seems sensible -- and, in fact, there is a bit of that in for some concepts in Lojban (not for heat, I think). Maybe Xorban will get that right. Or just the notion of a proper value and either coming up to, falling short of or exceeding that value -- which seems to be the current issue.

We could derive a long word glossed as "having a relatively-high temperature" even while providing "glr", glossed as "hot" as a shortcut. These would be synonyms, but the long form would serve to make the meaning of the short form transparent.

We can do abbreviations, but it would be a good idea to get the basics straight before going for economy. Otherwise you may economize yourself into contradictions or at least not quite getting what you want. Have you though about how to deal with scalar properties?

--
co ma'a mke

Xorban blog: Xorban.wordpress.com
My LL blog: Loglang.wordpress.com