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Re: [jboske] Digest Number 135
On Saturday, Dec 28, 2002, at 10:50 Australia/Melbourne, jboske@yahoogroups.com wrote: 


Message: 1
   Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2002 13:16:22 +0000
   From: "Jorge Llambias" <jjllambias@hidden.email>
Subject: RE: propositionalism redux



OK. And you're saying that two pictures of three snakes
can be pictures of different things, but two branches that
each looks like three snakes must look like the same thing?

But don't we want every picture of a snake (opaque sense)
to have the same subject matter?
Carthage must be destroyed, and branches looking like snakes don't look like any one particular snake, but like the generic lot: prototype or unique. 


Message: 5
   Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2002 10:41:52 -0500 (EST)
   From: John Cowan <cowan@hidden.email>
Subject: Re: mei, latest cause celebre

On my view, it's selbri-specific (and some selbri may be vague on this
point) whether "lo broda" means "a broda" and "loi broda" means "brodas
collectively", or "lo broda" means "a portion of broda" and "loi broda"
means "the broda substance".  (I am neglecting quantifiers here.)
So do you mean something like, lo remna cu sanga vs. loi remna cu sanga = individual/substance, lo remna cu pesxu vs. loi remna cu pesxu = portion/substance? 

I was going to reject this, but right now I don't see how...


Message: 8
   Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2002 10:55:53 -0500 (EST)
   From: John Cowan <cowan@hidden.email>
Subject: Re: more on Collectives (was: RE: mei, latest cause celebre



I will excuse piro loi nalmerko ke jboske prenu for not knowing that
the NAACP and the promoters of the Million-Man March are utterly opposed 
politically and otherwise


Oh right. Nation of Islam != NAACP. My bad.


(after all, pisu'o ny. comes from a country
where Unique-InMind-Politician is named "Bob"),


? You're not referring to Bob Hawke, erstwhile PM of Australia, are you?


Message: 13
   Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2002 11:13:23 -0600
   From: Jordan DeLong <fracture@hidden.email>
Subject: Re: Digest Number 134



[Nice on the big digest-style stuff, Nick.  Helps keep the volume
down]
Helps keep my sanity. Now you know why I have no proper Reply-To headers, though. 


I think depiction is a different issue, though:

Using prototype-style lo'e (which I could maybe live with, though
I think the statistical one is better):
        ti pixra da poi simsa lo'e since
        ti pixra lo simsa be lo'e since
works, I think.
Sure; but in that case, so would lo simsa be su'o since. Since we're using simsa, which is not mintu, we'd allow divergence of individual detail anyway. 


And probably better:
        ti pixra lo ckaji be leka since
or
        ti pixra lo ckaji be lesi'o since
With the time-honoured proviso that this is {su'o no ckaji}, not {su'o da poi ckaji leka since zo'u: ti pixra da}. We still need to have pictures of made up entities. 


And finally, for *real* usage:
        ti since pixra


Ah yes. The Helsem solution.


Message: 15
   Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2002 13:02:46 -0500 (EST)
   From: John Cowan <cowan@hidden.email>
Subject: Jim Carter's view of masses, gadri

Here's Jim Carter's view of Loglanmasses:

	Loglan has a concept of a "mass individual". According to Brown
	[L1] it is more characteristic of non-Western cultures. Here is my
	best explanation of it. Take the full referent set of an argument,
	and personify it so that, potentially at least, it is the same
	kind of thing as its members. For example, all sharks can be
	considered to be instances or manifestations of an archetypical
	shark god. This composite object is the mass individual. In
	Loglan, arguments in the "serving or portion" category, like
	"cutri-water", generally are used as mass individuals.
D00d (I've just been watching _Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey_), that... is the Unique! Now this is a pretty turn of events. The Unique is restoring Mr Shark to Lojban. 

Btw, I have this right, yes?

lo karni is a physical object
lo karni peme'e la niu.iork.taims. is the physical thing you pay 25c for out of those vending machine thingies
Last Monday's New York Times is a Unique of all those physical things --- they are all physical avatars of the underlying one issue.
The New York Times in general is a Unique of the Unique (which is just a different Unique).
The Unique has individual properties. Therefore the Unique of the NYT has 100-odd pages, not a zillion. 


I thought it might be interesting to see the Gua\spi list of
gadri as well.  They come in pairs depending on whether individuals
or sets are intended (these being the two classes of things in Gua\spi's 
rarefied ontology).  Phonological note: Gua\spi "x" = Lojban "j";
Gua\spi "w" = English "ng" (velar nasal).

xe: in-mind individual(s)
xy: the set of in-mind individual(s)


le


xa: each individual
xu: the set of every individual


lo


xi: each individual, except (an/a few) atypical one(s)
xr: the set containing every individual, except (an/a few) atypical one(s) 

Either Mode or Unique
Btw, I think this helps see what we can claim of the Unique, a legitimate concern Jordan raises. When Carlson defined his Kind, he first distinguished between indefinite plurals in English that are true of all their referents (Dogs breathe) and those true of most of them (dogs make good pets). The former is an individual plural: {ro lo gerku cu vasxu}. The latter is a generic statement: The Dog is a kind of animal that makes a good pet; sure there are exceptions, but in general... 

So right now, to keep my own sanity, I paraphrase as follows:

Prototype(x) = x, by definition
Unique/Kind(x) = x, in general
Mode(x) = x, most of the time
Now, you'd expect people to be saying stuff of the Kind when they've actually got a reasonable sample of the population: the Kind should be based on the Mode. But the Mode is a rather strong claim to make.
Taking avatars and individuals as the model for individuals and kinds again: in most messages, Nick is fundie. In a thread or two, Nick is revisionist. Say each message represents a different avatar of Nick. Some avatars are fundie, some revisionist. If almost all avatars are fundie, you say Nick (the unique extracted from the avatars) is fundie (in general). If a non-negligible number of exceptions become salient, you change that to Nick is sometimes fundie and sometimes revisionist. That is subjective, true, but not completely arbitrary. Mode Nick doesn't help here, because most of the time Nick is neither fundie nor revisionist, he's asleep, transcribing wordlists, or proofreading his book. 


xo: one or more individuals, it matters not which
xw: the set containing one or more individuals, it matters not which


... Intensional?

You mean, Carter got this right years two decades before we did? Aaargh!
(But did he allow quantification? So can you still distinguish between transparent and opaque with xa vs. xo?) 


Message: 16
   Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2002 18:53:11 -0000
   From: "And Rosta" <a.rosta@hidden.email>
Subject: RE: mei, latest cause celebre


I agree 100%, provided you also accept the corresponding def. of
"lojbanindividual", which is "natural individual or portion of substance" 
(and I think this is in fact uncontroversial)


Yes and no. If djacu is perforce what you are calling 'substance'
then certainly lo djacu is a countable amount of substance. But,
following xod's lead we have defined 'Substance' as uncountable
(and I can't remember whether absence of constituent members, i.e.
noncollectiveness was part of the definition). So by our special
definition of Substance, lo never 'refers' to a substance, while
loi never refers to a countable individual.
Still don't get it. You are allowing that remna can be considered as uncountable (cf. pussy), and djacu as countable (portions). I presume you're saying that underlyingly, water is still a substance, whether you count portions or not, and people are still individuals up until the time you put them through the grinder, whether you ignore the distinctions between them or not? But that's a nicety and essentialism, surely. 


Message: 18
   Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2002 18:53:17 -0000
   From: "And Rosta" <a.rosta@hidden.email>
Subject: RE: fundamentalism as fundamental (RE: Re: gadri paradigm:2 excellent proposals 

John:

And Rosta scripsit:
A. Ultra-fundamentalist. CLL is gospel except where it can conclusively be proved to be self-contradictory or to contravene inviolable principles 

Okay: the intent was to contrast with Nick's variety of pragmatic
fundamentalism, which is manifest also sometimes in you. I suppose
that that can be summed up as "you needn't honour the letter so
long as you honour the spirit".
A little loose for me. My own take is, we subtract stuff only when self-contradictory or against the principles (intolerable ambiguity etc.); we add stuff somewhat more liberally, in the hope of forestalling the Academians. 


Message: 19
   Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2002 18:53:18 -0000
   From: "And Rosta" <a.rosta@hidden.email>
Subject: RE: gadri



It is distressingly clear that Lojban is shortchanged of any tools to
distinguish between collectives and substances, and I'll settle even
for gismu at this stage


{loi tu'o} does substances.
{lo tu'o} presumably does a countable amount of universal-grindee.
{lo PAmei} does countable collectives.
{piroloiro}, {pirolu'o} probably do uncountable collectives.


loi tu'o: substance
lo tu'o: portion of substance
lo PAmei: lojbanmass, sorry, we already tried that
piroloiro; singleton ('uncountable') collective
loi tu'o loi ro: substance of collective
PA lo piro loi ro: countable collectives
PA lo piro loi tu'o: countable masses (which is the same as PA lo tu'o)


In other words, {tu'o} erases the boundaries between members.
{lo} gives you countability. {loi} gives you uncountability.
Adding {piro} before {loi} makes sure you are actually referring
to {loi} and not to {pisu'oloi}.


How safely established is that last bit?


So... I think your wish is granted....
I'll wait on that; it's what I'd dearly want, but I'm waiting on a few more amens. 


3. Unique
I wonder whether:


lo du be ro broda
lo du be ro (lu'a) le'i broda
lo du be ro (lu'a) la'i broda

would suffice (by the criteria that the BF uses to judge sufficiency)?
That's veridical, I see (as you say below). I think it's both clear and awkward enough for a new LAhE to be accepted anyway. New propaganda angle to push: Bring Back Mr Shark! :-) 


I think we can simulate intensionals (that would cope with cases
where lV'i broda is empty) as:

le du be ro broda
le du be ro (lu'a) le'i broda
le du be ro (lu'a) la'i broda
... head's spinning. So from -spec -ver , you're now going to +spec -ver +unique . I want Mr Doctor (i.e. any avatar thereof), where Mr Doctor can be made up.
... Remind me why {mi djica loi mikce} was rejected as a general solution? Because whatever it was sinks this too, I think... 


NB This message is meant as a contribution to SL not to AL. IOW,
the issue is "Can SL express the notion?", not "What means of
expressing this notion would satisfy our needs?".
Appreciated. This will encourage the kludge into being, I think (new UI or LAhE), rather than being the kludge itself. 


Message: 20
   Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2002 18:54:19 +0000
   From: "Jorge Llambias" <jjllambias@hidden.email>
Subject: Re: Digest Number 134



Herewith, the flame. This isn't necessarily about this in particular,
it's in general. In fact, I've toned it down enough that it's not
really a flame any more...
And thank you for your response. It's not what would delight me as a fundamentalist ("I accept that I am in sin if I do not follow the baseline"), but then the Organicists (Bob) never wanted that either. what we'll get is modus vivendi, and that's fine.
And if I'm concerned with my blood pressure, then I won't frequent this forum once the BPFK fora are up. :-) 


Message: 21
   Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2002 19:35:16 +0000
   From: "Jorge Llambias" <jjllambias@hidden.email>
Subject: Re: gadri



Thanks for the historical update. So things are indeed even worse than
I thought. The funny thing is, the MEX-obsesssed incompetence which
made tuples into math sets, and conflated tuples and masses, has also
saved the collective by introducing the cartesian product alongside the 
set.


Are you talking about {pi'u}? How does it save the collective?
It is one of my never-use cmavo.
Sorr, got pi'u and jo'u confused. I still suspect jo'u was introduced in a maths-induced bender, without realising it reintroduced the tuple as distinct from the mass; but that's a historical matter. 

And of course, drop the x1 .a x2 .a x3. Curses, foiled again.


Message: 22
   Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2002 14:44:03 -0500 (EST)
   From: Invent Yourself <xod@hidden.email>
Subject: Re: Re: big rethink on Unique and other gadri
"mi nitcu lenu mi tavla lo mikce" becomes "da poi mikce zo'u mi nitcu le 
nu mi tavla da". What other way is there to render it?


Wait, wait.

su'o da poi mikce zo'u: mi nitcu lenu mi tavla da (transparent, de re):
There is one doctor that I want to talk to
(Think of the outer prenex as a casting call, and a model-theoretic interpretation as a casting. If you want to talk to Dr Jay and not Dr Kay, you can truthfully say 

pa da poi mikce zo'u: mi nitcu lenu mi tavla da
When the prenex is inside the proposition (opaque, de dicto), the casting call does not affect the contents of the embedded proposition, because the embedded proposition is its own world. So 

pa ninmu cu djica lenu tavla pa mikce

is by default not:

pa da poi ninmu ku'o
pa de poi mikce zo'u:
	da djica lenu tavla de
because, when the casting is held, you can plug in Ms May and Dr Jay, and say 

la meis. djica lenu tavla la djeis. (to .enai la keis. toi)
But Ms May wants to talk to Any Doctor --- whether it's Jay, Kay, or Hay. So we get the doctor out of the prenex up front, and put it inside the embedded proposition: 

pa da poi ninmu zo'u:
	da djica lenu
		pa de poi mikce zo'u:
			da tavla de

When you interpret, you plug in Ms May:

la meis. djica lenu
	pa de poi mikce zo'u:
		da tavla de
But Dr Kay doesn't get plugged in. Because Dr Kay doesn't get the same casting call Ms May gets. In fact, the role of the doctor isn't cast at all: May just doesn't care who turns up. So, if Dr Kay does show up, she'll be happy. But she'll also be happy with Dr Jay showing up, or Dr Hay. So an interpretation plugging Dr Kay in misses the point. 

The default interpretation of

pa ninmu cu djica lenu tavla pa mikce
is de dicto not de re: the doctor is not filled in by an actual value when the woman is, because the doctor is trapped in the twilight zone of "what I want to happen", rather than the real world. You couldn't do this with an extensional predicate, like 

pa ninmu cu tavla pa mikce
By talking live to a doctor, even if he's hiding behind a Zorro mask, Ms May will know she's talking to a particular Doctor, not Any Doctor.
When we get into the stratosphere is when we introduce imagining. The doctor can be made up, and not exist in this world. You can need a six-letter gismu, and since there ain't no such thing, that's like saying you want nothing.
But! If the context is intensional, then you can make up a world --- with its own prenexes --- in which there is such a thing.
mi tavla lo pavyseljirna --- bull, there's no such thing, you're off with the pixies
mi djica lenu su'o pavyseljirna zo'u: mi tavla py --- yes: you want there to be a world (maybe this one, maybe not, such that there's a unicorn in it to talk to, such that you do talk to it.) 


Message: 24
   Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2002 18:42:30 -0500 (EST)
   From: John Cowan <cowan@hidden.email>
Subject: Re: gadri


Thanks for the historical update. So things are indeed even worse than
I thought. The funny thing is, the MEX-obsesssed incompetence which
made tuples into math sets, and conflated tuples and masses, has also
saved the collective by introducing the cartesian product alongside the 
set.


Can someone explain this tuples-vs-sets distinction to me?  When I use
the word "tuple", I mean "ordered list of fixed but unspecified size".
Or is "tuple" being used here as a cover term for "duo, trio, quartet, ..." 
rather than "pair, triple, quadruple, ..."?


As usual, I don't know what I'm talking about.
My hang up is the fixed size bit, but the Lojban mantra is that usually collective sizes are not fixed.
So a duo singing is a lojbanmass. But singing is not an emergent property, since you can say the individuals sing.
Carrying a piano is duo which is a lojbanmass, because you can factor in or out the supervisor and the blind dude's guide. Carrying is an emergent property (because no one dude does it), but we don't have a fixed size tuple.
"Actually carrying", of laftygau, is properly a tuple: it's true of the pair of the blind dude and the seeing dude, and does not involve the supervisor and the guide.
A collective is a lojbanmass comprised if intact individuals, with potentially emergent properties, depending on the context (selbri)
A tuple (or whatever) is a collective where the selbri holds only of the collective and not of the component individuals: it's all emergence. 

joi does Lojbanmass

jo'u and (at least today) loi ro do collective
The Nick-tuple may not be admitted to exist by anyone, and I fully admit that lots which we might think as done by Nick-tuple are really just done by Lojbanmass. 

The Nick-tuple may well be just a set.



Message: 25
   Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2002 23:50:11 -0000
   From: "And Rosta" <a.rosta@hidden.email>
Subject: RE: Digest Number 134



I have a slight reservation about this. If one must use inner
tu'o to get Substance (as we would like in AL), then all well
and good. But if {loi (ro)} can refer to substance then there
is no guarantee that {pi su'o loi ro} gives you a collective:
{pi mu loi ci broda nanmu} might give you, say, the bottom
halves of three people, or bodyparts totalling half the whole.
Well at least this ain't the universal grinder. Here, I'm more than happy to let pragmatics say we ain't doing this, but if we do, we can leave this to gismu: 

loi nanmu poi ro cmima be lu'i ke'a cu mulno

loi nanmu poi su'o cmima be lu'i ke'a cu spisa


True, that's not a valid BPFK argument. It's still my defense
for my usage

Plus, the ethos back in those days, when Lojbab was a bigger influence
on the community, was Usage Decides. One was encouraged not to tinker
but to use.
One isn't being encouraged to tinker now either of course :-) . And also, as xod said, all travel into uncharted terrain is tinkering.
Bob will himself tell you (and he said it to the board) that he wasn't expecting Usage Decides to deviate from the baseline so wilfully and soon. So Bob's spirit is being followed here. I think what has changed is that there is a tangible fundamentalism in the community (I was never as vehement on it, I don't think, as Jay or Jordan); but the talk of baselines has always assumed a freeze and some period of adhering to the freeze.
The expectation was (and I believe remains, as far as Bob is concerned) that we can get away with leaving semantics to Usage; my current position is that we must leave less to Usage, since that's where all the real deviation will happen. The syntax. we're really not all that concerned with, and everyone is either adhering to it, or not realising they're deviating (I am unable to write grammatical Lojban, as you all will know.) But how to do an intensional reference? No, that shall no longer be left to usage, because leaving it to usage has resulted in lo'e and loi being conscripted for purposes they weren't intended for in CLL, and this is regarded as a problem to be solved, by, I think, everyone. 


I don't plan to limit myself to whatever is defined as Standard
Lojban in my usage. Lojban belongs to its speakers, so it belongs
to me to the extent that I use it. (I would also assert that my
usage is no less standard than anybody else's usage, it only
gets labeled so because I discuss it and analyse it publicly, but
I'm sure we can find as many deviations from "the standard" in
everybody else's usage as well.)

Except they would probably say they were making mistakes, if they
could be brought to understand the nature of their error.
Excellent point. This is what I was alluding to when I said to xod "I don't like it that Lojban is turning into a language of flaggelators" --- which is what I do ("Oh, I didn't get intensionals! Woe betide me, I shall sin no more! Oh, I had no idea I should have used a termset! I shall sin no more! Oh, I don't want a specific event, but any event! May I be absolved!")
But... recognising error here also means I've learned something. I'd rather that...
[Nick Nicholas. French & Italian Studies, University of Melbourne ] [ nickn@hidden.email http://www.opoudjis.net ] [There is no theory of language structure so ill-founded that it cannot] [be the basis for some successful Machine Translation. --- Yorick Wilks]