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Jordan:
> On Sat, Dec 14, 2002 at 11:07:16PM -0000, And Rosta wrote:
> > Jordan:
> > > On Sat, Dec 14, 2002 at 07:58:07PM -0000, And Rosta wrote:
> > > > Jordan:
> [...]
> > > > > That's what nei is for:
> > > > > mi ckaji leka ce'u citka le nei
> > > >
> > > > But once the two coreferential terms are not in the same bridi,
> > > > it doesn't work, or at least not without cumbersome subscripting
> > > > operating according to unofficial and unagreed conventions
> > > >
> > > > Also, the meaning of {nei} has not been satisfactorily agreed
> > > > on yet
> > >
> > > Well; there's also the ability to explicitly subscript: ce'u xi pa
> > > is always the same
> > >
> > > If you're worried about length, go propose some da de di equivalents
> > > for ce'u (cei'a cei'u cei'i?). Personally I don't see a need though:
> > > 99.9% of the time people use only 1 variable in a ka abstract, so
> > > if you want a more complicated expression it's ok that you either
> > > need to use different stuff (nei), or if it's nested by more than
> > > one (no'a will work for 1) need to use subscripting
> >
> > The convenience of ke'a is exactly when you want to use one variable
> > more than once. It saves having to use ce'u subscripting (also an
> > unofficial convention), or nei/no'a subscripting (also unofficial),
> > which also won't even work if neither instance of the variable is
> > an argument of the selbri. The method that definitely will work is
> > ko'a-assignment with goi, but that is cumbersome. So, ke'a is much
> > more convenient than the alternatives
>
> Ok; you ignored the main point though: people almost *never* need
> to repeat these things in practice
None of us have very much basis for judging this, seeing as we have
all of us written and read so little, but you have had more
experience than me. All the same, in what I have read and written
I have noticed that other people are generally happy to use anaphora
that relies on glorking, while I am not and consequently find the
problem to be a severe one. (It's not that I think glorking is bad,
but the very thing that attracts me to a logical language is the
extent to which it can feasibly reduce reliance on glorking.)
> WRT to subscripting; those are obvious and (afaik) uncontroversial
> conventions which may very well be standard in a while
Is your subscripting scheme on the wiki? I remember us discussing
subscripting schemes (for nei/no'a) on one of the lists a while
back and not reaching agreement on the details of the scheme or
on what counts as a bridi (though iirc it was pc who disagreed
with others about what counts as a bridi, so maybe that disagreement
can be considered defunct).
> > That said, if there are poi/poi'i embedded within poi/poi'i, ko'a
> > assignment remains necessary, which is what led me to propose a
> > range of experimentals to abbreviate KOhA-assignment
>
> Most of those abbreviation things are a bit of a joke though. You
> have things like "goi'a" IIRC, which saves *one* syllable, and needs
> preprocessor changes to work properly.
If any require preprocessor changes then that was inadvertent error
on my part, as I have striven to distinguish between what is and
isn't baseline-compliant. (Preprocessor changes obviously aren't
baseline-compliant.) I will check "goi'a" when I go online; my
recollection was that I had proposed such a thing but moved it to
the page for obsolete proposals, but I may have intended to move
it but forgotten to actually do it.
Because the scope for introducing glork-free anaphora is so limited,
because of tight constraints on innovation, it is inevitable that
experimental cmavo can ameliorate the problem to only a slight
degree.
Regarding the saving of a single syllable, there is a sense in
which the saving of words is desirable, regardless of whether it
saves syllables. There are two reasons for this. The first is that
since syllable-count was ignored in the design, the best way to
do justice to the design, when exploring it through usage, is to
ignore syllable-count. The second reason is that one can measure
length not only in syllables but also in words (which are the units
of input that the parser operates on).
> Furthermore, the entire idea
> of proposing them now before there's any usage (particularly usage
> by yourself) suggesting them warranted goes against what you were
> saying about your views on shortings on the main list
If we had as a community agreed on a programme of usage that would
explore the design and deliberately ignore syllable count and, to
a certain extent, word count (e.g. allowing us to compound cmavo
that we wish were a single word, and letting the compound count as
a single word by stylistic criteria), then I would not be proposing
these abbreviatory experimentals. The one thing is what I think
the community should do, and the other thing is what I do given
what the community thinks it should do.
> (In case you can't tell, I really don't like those cmavo)
I know. And no doubt you would never use them and would refuse to
look them up if you encountered them in someone else's utterances.
But, defect though it is, I've never had much interest in winning
hearts and minds. I'm sure it would be to the benefit of Lojban
if I were capable of putting more energies into the politics of
persuading people to share my views, but I'm not built that way,
and the most I can do is at least make sure that my views are
adequately published.
--And.