WikiDiscuss

Jorge Llambías <jjllambias2000@yahoo.com.ar> wrote:

xorxes:

<<--- John E Clifford <clifford-j@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> xorxes:

> "P" is to "py" as "Q" is to "kybu"

("kybu" should have been "ky.bu")

> Thanks. I can never remember how to handle odd letters in Lojban’s

deficient

> alphabet. I suppose that {kuy} is illegit in some way. Pity.

h, q and w are {.y'y.bu}, {ky.bu} and {vy.bu}.

CLL lists iy and uy among the Lojban diphthongs, but they can only

appear in cmene. I avoid them completely, as I find them very

hard to pronounce.>>

Both those diphthongs are in my native idiolect, so I find them natural. And kuy, uy and iy as more natural forms for q, w, and y (in the English sense).

<<> <<

> pybu implik.bu kybubu vlina le natfe be py boi kybu

>

> But, shouldn't it be {me'o pybu implik.bu kybubu}?>>

>

> Thanks again. The {me’o}, however otherwise obnoxious, does allow me

to come

> down a {bu} and still avoid the pronoun problem (which I did not

avoid

> anyhow, as you note).

That still leaves the question as to the difference if any between

{me'o py. implik.bu ky.bu} and {me'o vei py. ni'e nafyvlina ky.bu} and

{me'o vei py. na.a ky.bu}. They are all grammatical, but are they all

sensical?, and if so, do they mean the same thing? >>

I don’t get the imprssion from the wordlists that {ni’e} would work in this way, but then it is remarkably unclear just how it does work. In terms of the supposition sets, they seem to be different: first about the formula as object, second about the meaning of the formula and third simply stating the situation. But then again maybe not.

...

<<> Though the names

> varied, there were usually at least the following types of “meanings”

of

> expressions:

>

> The physical expression itself: “Man has three letters”

> The expression as a bit of language: “Man is a noun”

Those two would appear to be {zo nanmu} in Lojban:

zo nanmu cu lerfu mumoi

zo nanmu cu gismu>>

Which suggests that {zo} (and the rest of the quotation apparatus, covering longer expressions in and out of lojban) is still ambiguous at a certain (extremely rare) level, not distinguishing a bit of language (its usual use) from the bare physical object as such.

<<> The expression as referring to a concept: “Man is subsumed under

animal.”

> The expression as presenting a concept: “Man is a rational animal”

> The exprssion as referring to objects “Man is any human or any male

human”

Those three would be {lo nanmu} with my understanding of {lo}:

lo nanmu cu klesi lo danlu

lo nanmu cu racli danlu

lo nanmu cu du ro nakni remna>>

I happily don’t remember what your {lo} is – something incoherent like Mr. nanmu comes to mind but I don’t believe that of you – so I can’t speak to what that catches of the distinctions intended. For standard {lo}, none of these work for the intended sense (that is they are all false sentences). I think that applies as well for Mr. nanmu, but incoherent concepts are notoriously hard to pin down in real cases.

<<> What is happening here is a failure to distinguish among some of the

earlier

> of these critters.

Lojban at least makes a two-way distinction, where English makes none.>>

Well, written English has, like lojban, quotes, but they work no better there than in lojban. Written English also uses capital letters to do a bit of the work (though that helps not at all at the beginning of sentences, as here). I suppose that lojban also can make some use of {ka} and {du’u} and, indeed, {lo’i}, and maybe other items in their neighborhoods, just as English can say explicitly “the set of” or “the concept of” and the like.

<<> I think I was looking for a way to present the physical

> expression orally rather than in writing. In that case, different

forms of

> the implication sign would probably have different representations.

What would be the analogous of the first two "man" for symbols?

"1+1" is pronounced in Lojban "(li/me'o) pa su'i pa"

So we could say:

zo su'i kruca

"+" is a cross

zo su'i mekfancu valsi

"su'i" is a MEX operator word>>

That looks about right.

<<> But I

> may have meant bits of language (and I a pretty certainly shifted

back and

> forth between at least these two), in which case the shape of the

sign would

> be unimportant and its function (as a contrast to say alternation

sign or

> quantifier) would be more significant.

But so far there appears to be no reason to leave "zo" or eventually

"lu-li'u" to talk about these things, which is the normal Lojban way

to deal both with physical expressions and with bits of language.

{me'o} for example can't deal with {su'i} because it is not a complete

expression. Similarly it can't deal with the physical expression nor

with

the bit of language {na.a}.>>

And the result is an ambiguity: the zo su’I of which the first is true is not one of which the second is true and conversely. The difference is not exactly use-mention but is clearly another sort of map-teritory mixup.

<<> In the sentence I aimed at and

> missed, however, I was pretty clearly dealing with meaning and so the

logical

> function comes to the fore, the shape being even less important than

before.

I can't quite grasp what {me'o} is about. Is it about bits of language,

like gismu/cmavo/mekso?>>

I fear that it may be indsicriminately about all three and leave us to sort it out by context, which we can usually do, but for which we can pretty easily construct unsorted cases: {zo su’i sampu} for example.

<<> Now, quite frankly, I want to do at least all three of these things –

on

> different occasions – and to keep them clearly separated when they

come close

> to one another (and it would be nice if this could be by devices that

could

> be extended throughout MEX, since it seems to be pervaded by this

kind of

> imprecision – leaving aside all its other problems).

It seems so to me too.

> And it does not seem to

> me that we can always rely on context to sort these critters out, so

we

> “need” (no one but an occasional philosopher is going to get caught

in this

> except occasionally – Korzybski to the contrary notwithstanding)

either

> different symbols or a disambiguating device to be called up when

needed.

It would be useful to first have some examples of the kinds of things

we would like to say about these things.>>

Well, you have given some above: the shape of the physical object, the grammatical category of a bit of language, the specific meaning of a word, and so on. And, of course (see my example above) there are cases that could be meant for any of these: a cross is simple as a design, being at most a second order pattern, {su’i} is simple as a basic operator symbol, and addition is simple, being one of the basic arithmetical operations (after successor).

<<> I

> have no problem with descriptive names, suitably modified to indicate

they

> are symbols ({lo xircutri tanxi sinxa} is just the wrong grammatical

type for

> use in the form of an expression as such): {zai xircutri bu}

{zai xircutci bu} would seem to select the Horse-shoe alphabet...>>

Yes, what seems to be needed is {lau}, though what the “two-word” means in its definition is unclear. Nor is it clear that we then need {bu}.

>or {lau…} or

> whatever does for that. Similarly, {nafyvlina bu} does find once the

> conceptual level is

> reached; the linguistic one could go either way I guess.

ko ciska lo xircutci tarmi sinxa le tanbo

Write a horse-shoe symbol on the board.

?ko ciska me'o xircutci bu le tanbo

?Write the expression consisting of the horse-shoe (operand) on the

board.

?ko ciska me'o nafyvlina bu le tanbo

?Write the expression consisting of the implication (operand) on the

board.

ko ciska me'o vei py na.a ky.bu le tanbo

Write the expression "if P then Q" on the board.

(Would this be satisfied by writing "P->Q"?)

?ko ciska me'o py nafyvlina bu ky.bu le tanbo>>

“?” indeed. I don’t know about any of these, which is why I am

asking.

pc