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xod: > On Fri, 13 Dec 2002, And Rosta wrote: > > > I will essay a full reply later > > > > In the meantime, though, I would ask what accommodation is made for > > people who see the prototype as basic, and who see different dogs as > > different avatars of Dog? > > This is a meaningless statement. We agree that lo'e gerku is a single, and > Mr. Dog is a single. The question is how the speaker arrived at the > qualities of it. Therefore, the "Mr. Dog" reading is redundant to whatever > Nick's dealing with which you think is not "Mr. Dog". Let me know if I > made absolutely no sense and I'll re-express it in Lojban No, please, not in Lojban. Let me restate. I see 'xod' as a single individual. My knowledge of the properties of xod are based mostly on experience but also on what I have read and heard about him. So you could say that my knowledge of xod is derived from "lo'i is-an-amount-of-xod". But when I say "I am addressing xod", I do not mean "Most avatars of xod are being addressed by me"; that is, I do not mean that the modal average member of "lo'i is-an-amount-of-xod" is being addressed by me. So when there is some phenomenon that we can view either as an individual or as a many-membered category, it is just not the case that the individual's properties are only those of the modal average member of the corresponding category. > > The stuff about myopic singularization and squinting is meant to show > > how if your starting point is a many-membered extension, you can work > > your way to the single prototype. But I think lo'e should just mean that > > single prototype. It will thereby cater to those who take prototypes to > > be basic, and those who don't can apply squinting to get to the > > prototype. (Very possibly I hadn't made this clear enough, but that > > was partly because I had been so unsuccessful in explaining the > > notion of prototype-as-basic.) > > > > In contrast, you want to insist on squinting as intrinsic to lo'e, insisting > > that lo'e broda can only be the product of squinting -- i.e. a derived > > rather than primitive concept > > > > I see this as an unwarranted metaphysical bias > > Which leaves the meaning too loose. Look at the different ways to arrive > at a single entity: they are too different to represent with a single > cmavo. Quite possibly. We can pose the question as "What is the *basic* or *essential* meaning of lo'e? Prototype, Mode, or Mean?" Stated in those terms, I have always favoured Prototype, while others seem to be favouring Mode. Let me note for the record that the lo'e/le'e meanings I favour are the ones I ascribed to loi'e/lei'e. The jboske community then seemed to mainly take the view that loi'e/lei'e = lo'e/le'e, and my subsequent contributions to the debate were premised on that. However, if a consensus emerged in favour of lo'e/le'e, I will gladly back off, go along with the majority, and revert to loi'e/lei'e (though if the BF insists only on documenting lo'e/le'e then I would rather insist on being outvoted). > In fact, we have two cmavo to play with, so let's select the two > most useful which are also close enough to the corpus, and assign them to > lo'e and le'e, and be done with it We don't have two cmavo to play with. We know the difference between lo'e and le'e, since all differences between o-gadri and e-gadri reduce to a single well-understood difference. So really our argument is about the meaning of "lV'e" -- once that is settled we will know the meanings of both "lo'e" and "le'e". --And.