#1995
9:21 AM Wed 1 Dec 99
 Subject:  prosa gutci  libi
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com


lo te cpedu befa lei tarci na se natmi

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#1996
9:45 AM Wed 1 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: mela sietl. me'o  damba nuzba
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com


.uanai .i lo jinme jenai ckabu danti cu xamgu xu

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#1997
12:36 PM Wed 1 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: re:  mela sietl. me'o damba nuzba
 From:  xod

From: xod xo-@bway.net

On Wed, 1 Dec 1999, michael helsem wrote:

> From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com
>
>
> .uanai .i lo jinme jenai ckabu danti cu xamgu xu


le nu pilno le danti le natymim cu to'e drani .i mu'a le mipri

The use of bullets on citizens is wrong. As evidence I cite the news
blackout.


-----
During the initial period after Falon is installed, you may feel
a little unused to it being in your body, you may have abdominal pain,
or feel like something is moving and have the sense of warmth, etc.
http://www.uidaho.edu/student_orgs/falun/eng/flg_5.htm#e1

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#1998
3:17 PM Wed 1 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re:  "What I have for dinner depends on what there
 From:  Iain Alexander

From: "Iain Alexander" i-@stryx.demon.co.uk

On 30 Nov 99, at 7:03, Jorge Llambias wrote:

> But we
> haven't as yet been able to explicitly determine the logic
> behind {kau}, even though the subject came up several times
> before.

I may well have suggested something like this before, but I think the logic
behind {kau} is that

E(x kau)

means

lambda x: E(x)

i.e. the function which assigns truth values to the expression E(...) given any
value of the {kau}-tagged variable x.

This implies you know the whole story - who came and who didn't come
(given the long-ago-snipped example).

It's a rather abstract view of the situation, but it works for me.  :-)

co'o mi'e .i,n.

--
Iain Alexander               PGP 1024-bit key id B501A0AD
i-@stryx.demon.co.uk   i.alexande-@bra0105.wins.icl.co.uk

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#1999
5:47 PM Wed 1 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: "What I have for  dinner depends on what there
 From:  la kinin
From: "la kinin" mtpeppe-@prodigy.net

Okay, so to settle this all once and for all, which one is correct?

la djan. djuno le du'u makau klama =
John knows the bridi (who (ind.) goes).
John knows who goes.

1) ro da zo'u la djan. djuno le jei da klama
for every X : John knows the truth value of (X goes)
No matter what you're thinking of, John knows whether it goes or not. (my
favorite)

2) [su'o] da zo'u la djan. djuno le jei da klama
for at least one X : John knows the truth value of (X goes)
There's something such that John knows whether it goes or not.

3) ro da poi klama zo'u la djan. djuno le du'u da klama
for every X that goes : John knows the bridi (X goes)
For everything that goes, John knows it does.

4) [su'o] da poi klama zo'u la djan. djuno le du'u da klama
for at least one X that goes : John knows the bridi (X goes)
There's something that goes which John knows does.

Or you could do something nasty with "tu'a" that I won't think about now.

------------------------------------------
Jhon Knows Who Goes
Jhon, Coca-Cola Bottling Plant #42
(never mind that)

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#2000
6:39 PM Wed 1 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: tu'a la  djan.
 From:  michael helsem
From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

la djan. davykla djuno

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#2001
7:00 PM Wed 1 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: mela sietl. me'o  damba nuzba
 From:  michael helsem
From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

mi na zanru da poi mi jimpe ke'a le la sietl. fasnu .i su'a
lo jecta cu cafne le pilno be le danti bei lenu jitro lei
cmima be vo'a to le natcmi toi .i xu le fasnu cu cizra .ijonai
xu lenu mipri cu cizra .i .a'ucu'i mintu

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#2002
7:35 AM Thu 2 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: "What I have for  dinner depends on what there
 From:  Jorge Llambias

From: "Jorge Llambias" jjllambia-@hotmail.com


la kinin cusku di'e

>Okay, so to settle this all once and for all, which one is correct?
>
>la djan. djuno le du'u makau klama =
>John knows the bridi (who (ind.) goes).
>John knows who goes.
>
>1) ro da zo'u la djan. djuno le jei da klama
>for every X : John knows the truth value of (X goes)
>No matter what you're thinking of, John knows whether it goes or not. (my
>favorite)

This one I think is close, but it doesn't get to the bottom
of it because {jei} is another form of indirect question.
You could write {le du'u xukau da klama} instead of
{le jei da klama}, and we still have to explain {kau}.

Also, I think the case where nobody goes needs to be
contemplated. In that case, John knows that nobody goes,
but that is not expressed by (1).

>2) [su'o] da zo'u la djan. djuno le jei da klama
>for at least one X : John knows the truth value of (X goes)
>There's something such that John knows whether it goes or not.

This one is definitely wrong. If John knows that Mary
does not go, that is not enough to claim that John knows
who goes, but it is enough to make (2) true.

>3) ro da poi klama zo'u la djan. djuno le du'u da klama
>for every X that goes : John knows the bridi (X goes)
>For everything that goes, John knows it does.

This is where I would start from, but as And pointed out it
is incomplete. I think the complete version could be:

3b) ro da poi klama zo'u la djan. djuno le du'u da klama
     ije ro de poi na klama zo'u la djan na djuno le du'u de klama
     ije no di klama ijanaibo la djan djuno le du'u noda klama
     For every x that goes, John knows that x goes
  & For every y that does not go, it is not the case that
     John knows that y goes
  & If no z goes, then John knows that nobody goes.

>4) [su'o] da poi klama zo'u la djan. djuno le du'u da klama
>for at least one X that goes : John knows the bridi (X goes)
>There's something that goes which John knows does.

This one is strange because it asserts that there is at least
someone who does go, which I don't think is part of
{la djan djuno le du'u makau klama}. Also, it makes the
Lojban assertion very different from the English one.
That is not bad in itself, but we should have some reason
to do it, shouldn't we?

>Or you could do something nasty with "tu'a" that I won't think about now.

Maybe, but it wouldn't be very enlightening...

co'o mi'e xorxes

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#2003
7:49 AM Thu 2 Dec 99
 Subject:  John knows who came.
 From:  Robert A. McIvor

From: "Robert A. McIvor" rmcivo-@macsrule.com

Hi,
        Here is a contribution to this discussion from TLI

>To say in E that
>
>1) John knows who came.
>
>is to say that
>
>2) John knows the identity of, i.e, another name for, everyone who came.
>
>and not merely that, as one of the lojbi put it, that
>
>3) For each x that came, John knows that x came.
>
>(2), logified, means that
>
>4) For every x such that x came there is a y such that John knows that x is
>y.
>
>This implies that to "know the identity of someone x" is to be able to put
>another designation to x.  If so, then this goes into L very neatly as
>
>5) Raba ji pa kamla gui be goi la Djan ga djano supo ba bi be.
>
>Any problems with this?  To make it easier, here's the back-trat:
>
>6) For every x that came there is a y such that John knows at least one
>case of x being y.
>
>And this certainly doesn't mean that D knows who didn't come!
>
>Jelhaisto!
>
co'o mi'e bab
>Hue Djim
>

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#2004
7:50 AM Thu 2 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: "What I have for  dinner depends on what there
 From:  Jorge Llambias

From: "Jorge Llambias" jjllambia-@hotmail.com


la i,n cusku di'e

>lambda x: E(x)
>
>i.e. the function which assigns truth values to the expression E(...) given
>any
>value of the {kau}-tagged variable x.
>
>This implies you know the whole story - who came and who didn't come
>(given the long-ago-snipped example).

I don't think you need to know who didn't come if
you know who came. You could deduce it, but that's
another story. The problem is that the predicate "know"
is especially confusing to treat these issues. If we change
to "John told me who came" it is more clear that he didn't
necessarily tell me who didn't came.

Would it be correct to say that he told me the function?
Or did he tell me what is the function, which is again
substituting one indirect question with another?

co'o mi'e xorxes

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#2005
8:07 AM Thu 2 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: John knows who  came.
 From:  Jorge Llambias

From: "Jorge Llambias" jjllambia-@hotmail.com


la bab cusku di'e

>Hi,
>       Here is a contribution to this discussion from TLI

[...]

> >4) For every x such that x came there is a y such that John knows that x
>is
> >y.
> >
> >This implies that to "know the identity of someone x" is to be able to
>put
> >another designation to x.  If so, then this goes into L very neatly as
> >
> >5) Raba ji pa kamla gui be goi la Djan ga djano supo ba bi be.
> >
> >Any problems with this?

I think there is a problem. Suppose that Mary is the only one
who came, Mary is Pauls wife, and John knows that Mary
is Pauls wife, but he doesn't know that Mary came.

Then we have:

For every x such that x came (namely for x=Mary) there is
a y (namely y=Paul's wife) such that John knows x=y
(John knows that Mary is Paul's wife).

This means that (4) is true, but John does not know
that Mary came!

co'o mi'e xorxes

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#2006
10:17 AM Thu 2 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: EU  patent system lobbying next month
 From:  PILCH Hartmut

From: PILCH Hartmut ph-@a2e.de

On Oct 23 I wrote

> > I will be in Brussels with a multi-company lobby delegation to talk to the
> > people in charge of designing the "EU community patent" next month.

A report of this event can be found under

        http://www.eurolinux.org/news/


> > Please see if you can sign the petition and possibly supply a Lojban
> > version
> >
> >     http://swpat.ffii.org/lojban/
> >
> > That might give me the boost that is necessary for me to be able to bring
> > up the subject of multilinguality and Logical Language.  Otherwise we will
> > focus entirely on the threat of software patents.

Due to lack of support from the Lojban community, we did not mention the
case of Lojban.  But I raised the issue during an international conference
at the Max-Planck-Institute in Munich last month.  It was then even
mentioned by the chairman in his final word that "during the coming year
we will have to look at the possibility of introducing a Logical Language
in the European patent system".

I am sure however that this issue will be forgotten, since nobody promotes
it.

--
phm

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#2007
11:14 AM Thu 2 Dec 99
 Subject:  banzu xireci
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

la cevni na ckabu danti

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#2008
11:15 AM Thu 2 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: "What I have for  dinner depends on what there
 From:  Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org

At 07:54 AM 12/2/99 -0800, Jorge Llambias wrote:
>From: "Jorge Llambias" jjllambia-@hotmail.com
>la i,n cusku di'e
>>lambda x: E(x)
>>
>>i.e. the function which assigns truth values to the expression E(...)
>>given any
>>value of the {kau}-tagged variable x.
>>
>>This implies you know the whole story - who came and who didn't come
>>(given the long-ago-snipped example).
>
>I don't think you need to know who didn't come if
>you know who came. You could deduce it, but that's
>another story. The problem is that the predicate "know"
>is especially confusing to treat these issues. If we change
>to "John told me who came" it is more clear that he didn't
>necessarily tell me who didn't came.
>
>Would it be correct to say that he told me the function?
>Or did he tell me what is the function, which is again
>substituting one indirect question with another?

Given the need to cover both "told" and "know", I think that what John
would know or tell would be "a description of the set", which might be an
enumeration of all members or a statement of their critical defining
property(ies).

Even so, you still have John's cognition as a limitation.  If John forgot
one person in his enumeration of who came, is it still true that "John told
me who came"?  So we might have to switch that from a set to a mass
description to accurate capture the way such phrases are used in natlangs.

lojbab
----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.

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#2009
11:21 AM Thu 2 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: tu'a la djan.
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

lu'etu'e la djan. cmene djuno le klama .i
la djan. prenu lifri le klama .i
la djan. morji sanji le klama .i
la djan. skicu jijnu le klama tu'u selsku cumki

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#2010
11:37 AM Thu 2 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: banzu xireci
 From:  xod

From: xod xo-@bway.net

On Thu, 2 Dec 1999, michael helsem wrote:

> From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com
>
> la cevni na ckabu danti


.i la cevni cu mo danti


-----
During the initial period after Falon is installed, you may feel
a little unused to it being in your body, you may have abdominal pain,
or feel like something is moving and have the sense of warmth, etc.
http://www.uidaho.edu/student_orgs/falun/eng/flg_5.htm#e1

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#2011
11:46 AM Thu 2 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: EU  patent system lobbying next month
 From:  Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org

At 07:17 PM 12/2/99 +0100, PILCH Hartmut wrote:
>From: PILCH Hartmut ph-@a2e.de
>
>Due to lack of support from the Lojban community, we did not mention the
>case of Lojban.  But I raised the issue during an international conference
>at the Max-Planck-Institute in Munich last month.  It was then even
>mentioned by the chairman in his final word that "during the coming year
>we will have to look at the possibility of introducing a Logical Language
>in the European patent system".
>
>I am sure however that this issue will be forgotten, since nobody promotes
>it.

I think the problem is that other than you, rather too few people have any
idea what is involved, and it seems rather quixotic to "promote it".  Also
most of us are spare timers, so that "promoting" something, which sounds
like a big job, is beyond our capabilities.  Signing a petition on patents
sounded like meaningless support when none of us actually do any work with
patents; why should they care that a bunch of people that have nothing to
do with patent law signed the petition.  A couple of lawyers in
intellectual property would seem more valuable than 100 random
Lojbanists.  If we misunderstand the politics whereby this is not so, you
need to communicate better as to how and why we can help.

lojbab

lojbab

lojbab
----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.

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#2012
11:52 AM Thu 2 Dec 99
 Subject:  would anyone like my  lojban site?
 From:  John Arley Burns

From: John Arley Burns hezekia-@cs.utexas.edu


coi rodo

I'm loosing my internet account (graduating), and I need someone to
take my lojban site. About the only useful part is the translation cgi
program, which is GPL'd. If someone wants to take anything from the
site, please do so, because it will be deleted shortly.

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/hezekiah/lojban

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#2013
12:51 PM Thu 2 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: banzu  xireci
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

la xod. cusku lu

.i la cevni cu mo danti li'u

.i munjyrijno

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#2014
12:59 PM Thu 2 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: re: banzu xireci
 From:  xod

From: xod xo-@bway.net

On Thu, 2 Dec 1999, michael helsem wrote:

> From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com
>
> la xod. cusku lu
>
> .i la cevni cu mo danti li'u
>
> .i munjyrijno



le mi cevni cu solji joi slasi



-----
During the initial period after Falon is installed, you may feel
a little unused to it being in your body, you may have abdominal pain,
or feel like something is moving and have the sense of warmth, etc.
http://www.uidaho.edu/student_orgs/falun/eng/flg_5.htm#e1

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#2015
6:58 PM Thu 2 Dec 99
 Subject:  prosa  gutci liso
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

mi xabju la sietl. calemu'e vlile kei pe le la radni.ken. ku
flaja'e .i za'a blaci se porpi vi le se cadzu baku .uanaisai

ni'o ze'upuku mi sidju lenu pante fi lei kratycuxna nunpenmi
petu'i la niu. iork. e la ditroit. ebabo la delys. i vi so'umei
mi ze'i pinfu .ei.i'a.oi.o'ucu'i .i mi ca tcidu lebi'unai
nuzba gi'e vrici cinmo .i ra'u le temci be la'edi'u cu clani
joi tordu simlu

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#2016
1:53 AM Fri 3 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: EU patent system  lobbying next month
 From:  PILCH Hartmut

From: PILCH Hartmut ph-@a2e.de

lojbab answered:

> >Due to lack of support from the Lojban community, we did not mention the
> >case of Lojban.  But I raised the issue during an international conference
> >at the Max-Planck-Institute in Munich last month.  It was then even
> >mentioned by the chairman in his final word that "during the coming year
> >we will have to look at the possibility of introducing a Logical Language
> >in the European patent system".
> >
> >I am sure however that this issue will be forgotten, since nobody promotes
> >it.
>
> I think the problem is that other than you, rather too few people have any
> idea what is involved, and it seems rather quixotic to "promote it".  Also
> most of us are spare timers, so that "promoting" something, which sounds
> like a big job, is beyond our capabilities.

Depending on your capabilities, you could
- place a link from www.lojban.org to swpat.ffii.org/lojban/
- write up additional documents to argue the case for using a Logical
  Language in patent specifications

> Signing a petition on patents
> sounded like meaningless support when none of us actually do any work with
> patents;

That's like saying "Signing a petition on civil liberties is meaningless
when none of us is actually a lawyer".

Patents are binding law that everybody is concerned with.

> why should they care that a bunch of people that have nothing to
> do with patent law signed the petition.  A couple of lawyers in
> intellectual property would seem more valuable than 100 random
> Lojbanists.

IP Lawyers will usually only sign petitions for the expansion of IP law to
more domains, so as to create more litigation.

So I would say, on the contrary, a couple of citiziens count more than 100
IP lawyers.

Currently, in the IP law system there is no division of powers.
Legislation, Jurisidiction and Execution are all in the hands of the same
people.  It is time to get citiziens in there as a counter-balance.

--
phm

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#2017
7:17 AM Fri 3 Dec 99
 Subject:  banzu xirevo
 From:   michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

purci lo cinza falo degji

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#2018
9:49 AM Fri 3 Dec 99
 Subject:  lojbo sance datnyvei
 From:  Arnt Richard Johansen

From: "Arnt Richard Johansen" enkefalo-@hotmail.com

In the ongoing mission of teaching the world to speak Lojban in the shower
(zo'onai zo'o), I have recorded some of my sample Lojban sentences.

Since I'm not quite sure my pronunciation is correct, I have not yet put
them on the "real" page.  I hereby ask all competent speakers with audio
hardware to have a look at
<http://people.fix.no/arj/lojban/test/sentences.html,> and tell me if
there's anything wrong.

co'o mi'e tsali

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#2019
1:41 PM Fri 3 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: EU patent system  lobbying next month
 From:  Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org

At 10:54 AM 12/3/99 +0100, PILCH Hartmut wrote:
>lojbab answered:
> > I think the problem is that other than you, rather too few people have any
> > idea what is involved, and it seems rather quixotic to "promote it".  Also
> > most of us are spare timers, so that "promoting" something, which sounds
> > like a big job, is beyond our capabilities.
>
>Depending on your capabilities, you could
>- place a link from www.lojban.org to swpat.ffii.org/lojban/

under consideration as part of the Web page revision in progress (but it is
Xmas time so my time is limited)

>- write up additional documents to argue the case for using a Logical
>   Language in patent specifications

I can't imagine being able to write something on this better than you can.

> > Signing a petition on patents
> > sounded like meaningless support when none of us actually do any work with
> > patents;
>
>That's like saying "Signing a petition on civil liberties is meaningless
>when none of us is actually a lawyer".

I think most Americans think that signing a petition on anything is
meaningless.  We are  taught more or less that policy is affected either by
ballot or by campaign contribution.  Some people of course think that
political demonstrations have an effect too (e.g. Seattle), but that hasn't
been too popular an option in 30 years.

(Further discussion on this topic (how to influence policies) in Lojban
might attract those who have been discussing the Seattle events)

>Patents are binding law that everybody is concerned with.

Understood that they affect everyone, but most people are not "concerned"
(meaning they consider it something in the background that is to be put up
with, however the powers-that-be arrange them.

> > why should they care that a bunch of people that have nothing to
> > do with patent law signed the petition.  A couple of lawyers in
> > intellectual property would seem more valuable than 100 random
> > Lojbanists.
>
>IP Lawyers will usually only sign petitions for the expansion of IP law to
>more domains, so as to create more litigation.
>
>So I would say, on the contrary, a couple of citiziens count more than 100
>IP lawyers.

Only if anyone reads the petition.  People might pay attention to someone
they know who is making a campaign contribution, over 100 people who they
never heard of who aren't.

>Currently, in the IP law system there is no division of powers.
>Legislation, Jurisidiction and Execution are all in the hands of the same
>people.  It is time to get citiziens in there as a counter-balance.

And the people who are going to decide this issue are those same people who
have no interest in letting citizens into the loop (not that Americans are
citizens in Europe, anyway).

Sorry if I sound cynical.  Maybe I'm just tired.  I really would like your
efforts to get somewhere, but too often it sounds so
hopeless.  Esperantists and Interlinguists have been lobbying the EU for
years and have gotten nowhere.

lojbab
----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.

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#2020
2:51 PM Fri 3 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: EU patent system  lobbying next month
 From:  PILCH Hartmut

From: PILCH Hartmut ph-@a2e.de

On Fri, 3 Dec 1999, Bob LeChevalier (lojbab) wrote:

> >- write up additional documents to argue the case for using a Logical
> >   Language in patent specifications
>
> I can't imagine being able to write something on this better than you can.

My ability is limited by my knowledge of Lojban.  I am not yet able to
translate any single set of patent claims into Lojban, although each time
I translate Japanese patent claims into English, I very much deplore the
ambiguity of the original and the extra ambiguity introduced by the
translation. In general, Japanese is capable of holding more complex
syntactic structures than English. Many Japanese patents actually lose in
European courts because of some misunderstanding which crept in during the
translation.

Patent descriptions are often chillingly amusing.  There is a certain
thrill in reading, how Amazon got a monopoly on buying books with a single
mouse click etc, and how this kind of thing is formulated in very
complicated and ambiguous sentences.  One could make a lot of fun of such
an example without even criticising it directly.  One could then explain
the limitations of non-logical language and show how Lojban does better.
This could be deepened by a Japanese example.

> > > Signing a petition on patents
> > > sounded like meaningless support when none of us actually do any work with
> > > patents;
> >
> >That's like saying "Signing a petition on civil liberties is meaningless
> >when none of us is actually a lawyer".
>
> I think most Americans think that signing a petition on anything is
> meaningless.  We are  taught more or less that policy is affected either by
> ballot or by campaign contribution.  Some people of course think that
> political demonstrations have an effect too (e.g. Seattle), but that hasn't
> been too popular an option in 30 years.

The petitions of FFII (10000 people against expansion of the European
patent system into the realm of software) have raised a lot of press
attention and have had an impact on public opinion.  Before, the EU
officials claimed that they had "consulted the interested parties".  Now
everybody knows that they have acted only behind closed doors and that the
interested parties are against them.  We are continuing to build public
pressure on this.  The next step is to get us into the legislative
commission.  Major German software companies and news media are supporting
this campaign.

> (Further discussion on this topic (how to influence policies) in Lojban
> might attract those who have been discussing the Seattle events)

If the Lojban community can send out the signal that
(1) we intend Lojban to solve the problems of patent language
(2) we can show that Lojban keeps what it promises
then others will take up the issue and do the lobbying work.

The current petition was signed by some people from the Association for
the Maintenance of the German Language (VWDS), which campaigns against
the abolition of German in the patent system and has 7000 members, some
of them quite active, with large media coverage and known by everybody.
These people only want to know that Lojban actually can do what I claim
it can do.  It must be shown that the idea itself is rock solid and not
just a fancy of a few crackpots.

> >Patents are binding law that everybody is concerned with.
>
> Understood that they affect everyone, but most people are not "concerned"
> (meaning they consider it something in the background that is to be put up
> with, however the powers-that-be arrange them.

This makes the campaigning especially hard, but not hopeless.
Compared to the relatively small effort we have so far put into it, the
resonance has been splendid.

Even if this campaign doesn't achieve its goals, it can easily succeed in
making Lojban known to a lot of people.  To many more than you could reach
by any high-cost advertisement campaign.

> >So I would say, on the contrary, a couple of citiziens count more than 100
> >IP lawyers.
>
> Only if anyone reads the petition.  People might pay attention to someone
> they know who is making a campaign contribution, over 100 people who they
> never heard of who aren't.

If the idea is widely supported, even a few lawyers will figure out that
this gives them a market to make some money, and suddenly they will
discover the call of their conscience.

> Sorry if I sound cynical.

You can hardly beat me in cynicism.  Only by adding cynicism to idealism
can we become realists.

> Maybe I'm just tired.  I really would like your
> efforts to get somewhere, but too often it sounds so
> hopeless.  Esperantists and Interlinguists have been lobbying the EU for
> years and have gotten nowhere.

Lojbanists have in their hands something that can be put to technical use.
That's quite different.

--
phm

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#2021
3:13 PM Fri 3 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: EU  patent system lobbying next month
 From:  Jorge Llambias

From: "Jorge Llambias" jjllambia-@hotmail.com


>My ability is limited by my knowledge of Lojban.  I am not yet able to
>translate any single set of patent claims into Lojban, although each time
>I translate Japanese patent claims into English, I very much deplore the
>ambiguity of the original and the extra ambiguity introduced by the
>translation.

Can we be sure that Lojban will do any better? Do you have
a short patent claim example that we could try to translate
into Lojban to see whether the Lojban version really is
better than the English one? I doubt anybody is yet able to
translate a single set of patent claims into Lojban, but
we could start by trying. I admit that I have no idea
what kind of support I could give you. The text you asked
to translate last time is totally out of reach for my
current abilities in Lojban, and it wasn't even a patent
claim, but it had a lot of difficult jargon.

co'o mi'e xorxes

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#2022
2:18 AM Sat 4 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: "What I have  for dinner depends on what there
 From:  And Rosta

From: "And Rosta" a.rost-@pmail.net

> From: "Jorge Llambias" jjllambia-@hotmail.com
>
> la i,n cusku di'e
>
> >lambda x: E(x)
> >
> >i.e. the function which assigns truth values to the expression
> E(...) given
> >any
> >value of the {kau}-tagged variable x.
> >
> >This implies you know the whole story - who came and who didn't come
> >(given the long-ago-snipped example).
>
> I don't think you need to know who didn't come if
> you know who came. You could deduce it, but that's
> another story. The problem is that the predicate "know"
> is especially confusing to treat these issues. If we change
> to "John told me who came" it is more clear that he didn't
> necessarily tell me who didn't came.
>
> Would it be correct to say that he told me the function?
> Or did he tell me what is the function, which is again
> substituting one indirect question with another?

Maybe "He caused me to know the function, by speaking" or
suchlike.

But in at least some cases the indirect question remains:

  When you start school depends on when you are born.

=
A.  ... depends on what the function 'when-you-are-born' is

& not =

B.  ... depends on the function 'when-you-are-born'

However, maybe if you somehow quantify over worlds the A, version
would work, somehow. But my brain's gone to sleep. Enough.

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#2023
6:45 AM Sat 4 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: EU patent system  lobbying next month
 From:  Robin Turner

From: Robin Turner robi-@bilkent.edu.tr

Jorge Llambias wrote:
>
> From: "Jorge Llambias" jjllambia-@hotmail.com
>
> >My ability is limited by my knowledge of Lojban.  I am not yet able to
> >translate any single set of patent claims into Lojban, although each time
> >I translate Japanese patent claims into English, I very much deplore the
> >ambiguity of the original and the extra ambiguity introduced by the
> >translation.
>
> Can we be sure that Lojban will do any better? Do you have
> a short patent claim example that we could try to translate
> into Lojban to see whether the Lojban version really is
> better than the English one? I doubt anybody is yet able to
> translate a single set of patent claims into Lojban, but
> we could start by trying. I admit that I have no idea
> what kind of support I could give you. The text you asked
> to translate last time is totally out of reach for my
> current abilities in Lojban, and it wasn't even a patent
> claim, but it had a lot of difficult jargon.
>

If it's beyond Jorge's capacities, it's probably beyond anyone's
;-)  However, I think it would be good ammunition to provide
versions of a particularly ambiguous part of a patent claim -
even just one or two sentences - in the original, in an English
translation, and in Lojban, with a commentary on the ambiguities
involved.  Good opportunities would be provided by ambiguities in
parsing, connectives (e.g. OR vs XOR, IF vs. IFF) or reference
(e.g. who or what does "they" refer to?).

Given that Pilch isn't so sure of his Lojban, why doesn't he post
a short example in English to the list (pointing out how
ambiguities should be resolved) then any interested party can
have a go at a Lojban translation.

co'o mi'e robin.

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#2024
6:57 AM Sat 4 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: re: banzu xireci
 From:  Robin Turner

From: Robin Turner robi-@bilkent.edu.tr

michael helsem wrote:
>
> From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com
>
> la xod. cusku lu
>
> .i la cevni cu mo danti li'u
>
> .i munjyrijno
>

pe'i le mi cevni cu morna ganzu pruce

co'o mi'e robin.

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#2025
7:00 AM Sat 4 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: nuzba le damba pe la  siatl
 From:  Robin Turner

From: Robin Turner robi-@bilkent.edu.tr

recipro-@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca wrote:
>
> From: recipro-@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca
>
> la xod. pu ciska di'e
>
> > 20 000 le prenu ba'o damba le na'e bredi pulji le si'o terdi vecnu tu'i la
> > siatl .i ku'i le ralji velsku nu'o cusku le du'u le pulji pu cecla be le
> > ckabu danti teka'a le panpi
> >
> > 20 000 people fought the police over Free Trade in Seattle -- but the
> > mainstream media isn't reporting that the cops fired rubber bullets at
> > peaceful protestors!
>
> .i tu'i la kanadas. pu'i go'i
>
> In Canada they are.
>
.i la bybycys. go'i

co'o mi'e robin.

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#2026
7:53 AM Sat 4 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: EU patent system  lobbying next month
 From:  Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org

At 04:42 PM 12/4/99 +0200, Robin Turner wrote:
>If it's beyond Jorge's capacities, it's probably beyond anyone's
>;-)

I would never demean Jorge for his attempts to use Lojban, but we can
always sic Nick Nicholas on it.  Nick is the only one who has ever tried to
use MEX to translate mathematical text in a technical work (he made
mistakes, but then he had only been using the language for a couple months
when he tried).

>  However, I think it would be good ammunition to provide
>versions of a particularly ambiguous part of a patent claim -
>even just one or two sentences - in the original, in an English
>translation, and in Lojban, with a commentary on the ambiguities
>involved.  Good opportunities would be provided by ambiguities in
>parsing, connectives (e.g. OR vs XOR, IF vs. IFF) or reference
>(e.g. who or what does "they" refer to?).
>
>Given that Pilch isn't so sure of his Lojban, why doesn't he post
>a short example in English to the list (pointing out how
>ambiguities should be resolved) then any interested party can
>have a go at a Lojban translation.

This is indeed the sort of thing that we need, ESPECIALLY if he can point
out the language issues that made the translation hard.  That may take
giving us a short piece of Japanese (or German), and then telling us the
limitations of translating it various ways into English, from the
standpoint of patent law.  To argue this case, you need to be able to
explain why the existing solution fails as well as why the proposed
alternative is better.

lojbab
----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.

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#2027
4:08 PM Sat 4 Dec 99
 Subject:  Hi ...
 From:  c.d.wrigh-

From: c.d.wrigh-@solipsys.compulink.co.uk

cio rodo,

I've been incredibly busy lately and unable
to contribute to the list, but I thought I'd
check with the  /cognoscenti/  that I've got
my new .sig right ...


  \\//  zuku ko jmive gi'e snada


cdw
--
\\//  zuku ko jmive gi'e snada

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#2028
4:46 PM Sat 4 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: EU patent system  lobbying next month
 From:  xod

From: xod xo-@bway.net

I took a shot at translating that file that Pilch asked to be translated
-- and I finished. I sent it to Pilch but it never arrived, so on Tuesday
I will get it from the computer that has it, and post it to this list for
dissection.

-----
During the initial period after Falon is installed, you may feel
a little unused to it being in your body, you may have abdominal pain,
or feel like something is moving and have the sense of warmth, etc.
http://www.uidaho.edu/student_orgs/falun/eng/flg_5.htm#e1

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#2029
5:26 PM Sat 4 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: Hi ...
 From:  Jorge Llambias

From: "Jorge Llambias" jjllambia-@hotmail.com



>cio rodo,
>
>I've been incredibly busy lately and unable
>to contribute to the list, but I thought I'd
>check with the  /cognoscenti/  that I've got
>my new .sig right ...
>
>
>   \\//  zuku ko jmive gi'e snada
>
>
>cdw

I think you mean: ze'uku ko jmive gi'e snada

{zuku} says that the living and prospering occurs
a long time from now (either past or future).
{ze'uku} says that it lasts for a long time...

co'o mi'e xorxes

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#2030
2:30 PM Sun 5 Dec 99
 Subject:  ambiguity  in patent claims
 From:  PILCH Hartmut

From: PILCH Hartmut ph-@a2e.de

US Patent 5,975,630
Claim 1.  A sun tracking lounge chair, consisting of:
  a base;
  an electric motor drive mounted on the base;
  a chair portion rotably mounted on the base, and being operably attached
    to the motor drive;
  a main solar electric power array electrically coupled to the motor drive
    by a circuit;
  the circuit including a photo transistor switch operable to activate the
    motor drive for a minimum period of five seconds when not exposed to
    sunlight; and
  the circuit further including a timer operable to deactivate the motor
    drive after a predetermined activation period of thirty seconds.

Especially the last two clauses beginning with "the circuit" could be
interpreted in many ways, depending on how the words are grouped.  I.e. it
could be

(the cirucuit including a photo transistor switch) (operable to activate
the motor drive) (for a minimum period of five seconds) (when not exposed
to sunlight)

but it is probably

the circuit (including (a photo transistor switch (operable to (activate
the motor drive (for a minimum period of fife seconds) (when not exposed
to sunlight))))

Usually the right interpretation would be found by looking at the
specification.  This needs a lot of human intelligence which can't be
provided by automatic translation.

Still, in this example the ambiguity is rather easy to resolve based on
some common everyday experience.  It serves only to show the difficulty of
automatic translation.

I hope I can find some better examples soon, especially involving Japanese
patent claims.

--
phm

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#2031
7:00 AM Tue 7 Dec 99
 Subject:  "what i have for  dinner" [resend (1)]
 From:  And Rosta

From: "And Rosta" a.rost-@pmail.net

I think this didn't get through before.

> Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1999 16:07:32 -0000
>
> > From: "Jorge Llambias" jjllambia-@hotmail.com
> >
> > > > >   What I have for dinner depends on what there is in the fridge.
> > > >
> > > >   le nu mi citka roda poi mi citka ke'a cu jalge
> > > >    le nu rode poi ke'a nenri le lekmi'i cu nenri le lekmi'i
> > > >   "My eating that which I eat is a result of
> > > >    that which is in the fridge being in the fridge".
> > >
> > >I don't think this gets it. Yours (but not my original) would be
> > >true if the fridge contents' being fridge contents had, say,
> > >miraculously healed me of an inability to eat.
> >
> > I think you're right. What I would need is: "My eating that
> > which I eat, and not something else, is a result of
> > that which is in the fridge, and not something else, being
> > in the fridge".
> >
> > Would that do it?
>
> I reckon so. Astrophysics's gain is linguistics' loss.
>
> [I can't explain the genitives in that sentence. They just sound
> righter than the alternatives.]
>
> > > > It seems to work for other indirect questions as well:
> > > >
> > > >    la djan djuno le du'u makau klama
> > > >    John knows who came.
> > > >
> > > >    ro da poi ke'a klama zo'u la djan djuno le du'u da klama
> > > >    For each x that came, John knows that x came.
> > >
> > >I think you need to add
> > >
> > >     ... and for each x that did not come, John knows that x
> > >           did not come
> >
> > Right, and I think I also need to add: "... and if nobody came,
> > then John knows that nobody came."
>
> I don't see why. Ah, hang on. You're saying that "Everybody is
> such that John knows they didn't come" doesn't entail "John
> knows everybody didn't come", but that "John knows who came"
> requires there to be such an entailment. Hmm. Not necessarily:
>
>    A: You know who came.
>    B: Do I? I don't know of anyone's having come.
>    A: That's right; nobody came.
>
> In other words, B knows who came, but doesn't know that they
> know who came(!)
>
> This is getting into greater subtleties than I'd originally
> intended. I wonder whether it is "know" that is complicating
> things here, rather than interrogativity per se.
>
> > And I need to add something like that in the prenex version
> > of what I have for dinner, too, to cover the cases where
> > I had nothing for dinner or where there is nothing in the
> > fridge.
> >
> > Indirect questions are complicated beasts.
>
> Indeed. Oddly, I'm not aware of a profusion of studies of their
> semantics in the linguistics literature.
>
> > >> >    la djan djuno le du'u makau klama
> > >> >    John knows who came.
> > >> >
> > >> >    ro da poi ke'a klama zo'u la djan djuno le du'u da klama
> > >> >    For each x that came, John knows that x came.
> > >>
> > >>I think you need to add
> > >>
> > >>     ... and for each x that did not come, John knows that x
> > >>           did not come
> >
> > After some more thought, I think a better rendering would
> > be: "For each x that came, and for no other x, John knows
> > that x came." This is because if Paul didn't come, but
> > John doesn't even know of Paul's existence, then saying
> > "John knows that Paul didn't come" sounds wrong. Better
> > to say that John doesn't know anything about Paul.
> >
> > That way it also fits better with the dinner one.
>
> So we ssem to be saying that interrogatives mean:
>
> "for set s, such that for every x x is in s iff [whatever],
> for all?/some? y, such that y is in s,
> for all?/some? z, such that z is not in s,
> it is/being the case that y is in s and z is not in s"
>
> This would seem to cover:
>
>        Where you live influences *what your insurance premiums are*.
>        Your living in that neighbourhood influences *what your
>          insurance premiums are*.
>        John knows *who came*.
>
> -- setting aside the issue of to what extent the knower knows that he
> knows what he knows...
>
> For *whether he came*, s is the set of truth values of "he came".
> I think.
>
> If you agree with this, my next question is how to strip the
> repetition out of the formula.
>
> I think my former rendition of "know who came" as "for every x, know
> whether x came" (with a further step to translate "whether" into
> logical form) was simpler than what we are proposing here, but I
> never got it to generalize to nonepistemic examples like the
> insurance premium ones above.
>
> --And.

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#2032
7:00 AM Tue 7 Dec 99
 Subject:  "what i have for  dinner" [resend (2)]
 From:  And Rosta

From: "And Rosta" a.rost-@pmail.net

This got returned undelivered too.

> Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1999 16:08:36 -0000
>
> Xarmuj:
> > > > It seems to work for other indirect questions as well:
> > > >
> > > >    la djan djuno le du'u makau klama
> > > >    John knows who came.
> > > >
> > > >    ro da poi ke'a klama zo'u la djan djuno le du'u da klama
> > > >    For each x that came, John knows that x came.
> > >
> > > I think you need to add
> > >
> > >     ... and for each x that did not come, John knows that x
> > >           did not come
> >
> > But does the use of "makau" really imply either? As I understood it, "la
> > djan. djuno le du'u makau klama" meant something like
> >     John knows the/an answer to "Who came?"
> > Without implying that he knows the complete answer to that
> question. And,
> > of course, if both Bob and Alice came, that would be true even if John
> > only knew that Bob came.
> >
> >     co'omi'e xarmuj.
>
> Taking exx like "what I eat for dinner depends on what is in the
> fridge", my best shot is:
>
>   There is some x and there is some y such that it being the case
>    that x is an answer to "what did I eat for dinner?" depends on it
>    being the case that y is an answer to "what is in the fridge?"
>
> -- this seems to work, though a logical explication of "X is an
> answer to [question]" is still required, and that is not a trivial
> task.
>
> --And.
>

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#2033
7:01 AM Tue 7 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re:  "What I have for dinner depends on what
 From:  And Rosta

From: "And Rosta" a.rost-@pmail.net

Another resend.

> Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1999 11:01:42 -0000
>
> > From: xod xo-@bway.net
> >
> > Call me a spoilsport, but I happen not to think that the inability to
> > exactly translate a given English sentence into a short Lojban bridi and
> > maintain all the cultural nuances is a problem.
>
> I agree, but in this instance we're talking not about cultural nuances
> but 100% logical meanings, the stuff expressible by the mechanisms of
> formal logic, which is the very core of Lojban.
>
> --And.

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#2034
11:27 AM Tue 7 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re:  "what i have for dinner" [resend (1)]
 From:  Jorge Llambias

From: "Jorge Llambias" jjllambia-@hotmail.com


la and cusku di'e

> > For *whether he came*, s is the set of truth values of "he came".
> > I think.

I don't think the set of truth values enters into it directly,
because "to know a truth value" means "to know what the
truth value is", so you still have an indirect question.

I think that under this scheme, "whether he came" would be
transformed like this:

     la djan djuno le du'u xukau ko'a klama

     ko'a klama inajabo la djan djuno le du'u ko'a klama
     ije ko'a na klama inajabo la djan djuno le du'u
     ko'a na klama.
     "If he came, John knows that he came, and if he
     didn't come, John knows that he didn't come"

Which would correspond to "where you live influences whether
your insurance premiums are high":

   le do binrydi'a cu kargu inajabo le nu do ta xabju
   cu rinpau le nu le do binrydi'a cu kargu
   ije le do binrydi'a na kargu inajabo le nu do ta xabju
   cu rinpau le nu le do binrydi'a na kargu
   "If your insurance premiums are high, your living there
   influences your insurance premiums being high, and
   if your insurance premiums are not high, your living
   there influences your insurance premiums not being high."

I don't think you can make this one work with the set
of truth values. Of course, if "Are your insurance premiums
high?" is considered to admit more than two answers, then
those other answers should be added as well with more
conjunctions.

> > If you agree with this, my next question is how to strip the
> > repetition out of the formula.

I don't know, it doesn't seem possible.

> > I think my former rendition of "know who came" as "for every x, know
> > whether x came" (with a further step to translate "whether" into
> > logical form) was simpler than what we are proposing here, but I
> > never got it to generalize to nonepistemic examples like the
> > insurance premium ones above.

I never understood the further step to transform "whether"
into logical form. It seeemed to depend on using two different
meanings of "know", to know a fact and to know an object.

But you can transform "what there is in the fridge" to
"whether there is x in the fridge": For every/some? x, what
I have for dinner depends on whether there is x in the fridge.

For every/some x, for every/some y: Whether I have x for
dinner depends on whether there is y in the fridge.

I think it might work, but reducing "whether" to logical
form doesn't seem to me easier than "what".

co'o mi'e xorxes

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#2035
12:18 PM Tue 7 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: EU patent system  lobbying next month
 From:  xod

From: xod xo-@bway.net

Here is my translation of Hartmut's document. Please consider it a first
draft, with the further qualification that much of it was hurried as I was
trying to beat an acceptance deadline. I am notorious for omitting selma'o
SE in sumti.

It uses my samyjvoste found on decadezero.org.


Informal key:

ko'a Linux
ko'e i18n
ko'i local.
ko'o Glob.


1: An effort to make it easier for Linux application programmers to
support all the world's languages

1: .i ti du le se gunka be fo le zmadu frili za'i le le mutymi'ipla pe la
lainyks goi ko'a ku pilno le ro munje bangu (This is an effort...)

(easy for Linux application programmers to support all the world's
languages: frili za'i le mutymi'ipla pe la lainyks goi ko'a ku pilno le ro
munje bangu)

2: internationalisation

2: .i ko'e goi le pu'u galfi be fi le za'i jimpe be fa so'i le natmi bei
le selcusku

3: Linux Internationalisation Initiative

3: .i le ko'a ko'e te snada

4: Linux Standard Base

4: le ko'a mulno pilno skicu (sorry, need a lujvo for describe?)

5: This is a voluntary working group, consisting of Linux-related
contributors who are working on Globalization, which is composed of
Internationalization and Localization.

5: .i le pu'u galfi be fo le za'i jimpe be fa so'i le cecmu bei le
selcusku goi ko'i .i ti dunli le tolbilga bende be lei ko'a dunda bei fo
le nu gunka be ko'o goi ko'e joi ko'i

6: The objectives of the working group are as follows:

6: .i le bende nu'o zukte fi di'e

7: Leverage collaborative efforts among contributors of Linux
Internationalization.

7: .i pilno le girzu gunka be fa lei dunda be le ko'a ko'e

8: Provide a forum for contributors to have technical discussions about
Internationalization.

8: .i dunda le jai tu'i cusku fai le ko'a dunda le ko'e ku'u le skami
gunka

9: Perform necessary coordination among projects that are related to Linux
Internationalization.

9: .i zukte le zu'o sarcu ganzu be lei pu'u gunka pe ko'a ko'e

10: Actively disseminate Linux Internationalization related information.

10: .i zukte fatri be fa ko'a ko'e selcusku

11: Provide specification of Internationalized APIs and components that
every distribution should include to ensure application portability and
interoperability among various Linux distributions.

11: .i dunda le mulno skicu be le ko'e mutymi'isfe joibo mutymi'iterci'e
poi ro le ko'a fatri ca bilga le za'i ri kansa ke'a le za'i vrici ko'a
fatri simpli

12: Develop a catalogue of Internationalized components of Linux
(including documentation, message catalogues, etc).

12: .i zbasu joi ciska le liste be le ko'e ko'a mutymi'iterci'e .i mu'a
cusku le pliski joi notci liste mu'anai

13: Establish necessary liaisons with various committees and organizations
who are working on Internationalization

13: .i zbasu lei sarcu ke bende krati be fi le vrici ke kamni je bende be
fo le pu'u ko'e gunka

14: Define a process for creation of and dissemination of a core set of
Globalized documentation and localizable elements for Linux and
applications that run on Linux

14: .i finti le pruce be fo le pu'u lei ko'o pliski joi ko'i
mutymi'iterci'e ku zbasu je fatri

(ko'i mutymi'iterci'e = "localized component")

15: Produce documentation on how to globalize applications and other
resources for Linux.

15: .i zbasu lei pliski fi'o selsku le pu'u galfi be le ko'a mutymi'i bei
ko'o

(good tanru for Application is needed!)

16: Promote the universal translation of existing and future documentation
by working with existing documentation and localization providers.

16: .i sarji le nu munje fanva le cajeba pliski sepi'o le ca pliski joi
gasnu be fa ko'i

17: The scope of our activities will be focused on software/application
portability and interoperability in the International context.

17: .i le nu mi zukte cu kuspe

18: The membership of this working group shall be open to anyone who is
interested in contributing to Linux Internationalization.

18: .i le bende jorne kuspe pu'o gubni le da se cinri le nu dunda be fi
ko'e ko'a

19: Home

19: le xabju (?)

20: Charter

20: le velbende skicu selsku

21: Subgroups

21: lei jutsi be le bende

22: Members

22: le selbende

23: Sponsors

23: le dunda

24: Call for participation to the Li18nux Working Group

24: le cpedu le nu jorne le ko'a gunka bende

25: We are pleased to inform you that the %{LII} (that may be abbreviated
as Li18nux or LI18NUX) has been founded in September 1999, and calling for
your participation into this activity.

25: .i pu'a mi ku mi cusku le sedu'u la %{LII} ba'o jbena be fi 09/99 kuku
joi le cpedu le nu do jorne le ti nu zukte

26: or %{LI} when it becomes available

26: .ije la jai tu'i pilno gubni fai le ko'e ko'a

27: If you agree with the above objectives, and work with us together,
please fill in the %(af:application form) and send it to %{ADR}.

27 .i ganai ge do tugni di'u gi do pilno jorne mi gi .e'o ko galfi la
%(af:application form) goi ko'u le za'i mulno ciska seni'i le nu do benji
ko'u la %{ADR}


-----
During the initial period after Falon is installed, you may feel
a little unused to it being in your body, you may have abdominal pain,
or feel like something is moving and have the sense of warmth, etc.
http://www.uidaho.edu/student_orgs/falun/eng/flg_5.htm#e1

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#2036
1:50 PM Tue 7 Dec 99
 Subject:  Begining the trek to  Lojbanistan...
 From:  A. R. Goldman

From: "A. R. Goldman" argoldma-@mindspring.com

Greetings:
I picked up my copy of the Lojban grammar on Saturday, and was
informed that it was rather dense... I am enjoying it enormously,
but wondered if any of the more experienced Lojbanists might give
me a bit of guidance as to the best way to proceed with learning
the language... Is it best to tackle the grammar head on... or to
approach the Grammar book in another order than that in the table
of contents?  Also, is the textbook available in a hard copy, or
only on the web?
Thanks for your help... I look forward to posting in Lojban...
ARGoldman

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#2037
8:58 PM Tue 7 Dec 99
 Subject:  le selsa'a
 From:  recipro-

From: recipro-@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca

I'm attempting to write a song in Lojban, and am quickly discovering how
difficult it is to do lyrics in a language you're not fluent in...
One thing: How do numbers work in lujvo? I'm trying to work out a word for
"paranoid", and "rolte'a" came to mind, with the intended meaning
"fearful of everything" -- but does that work?

        co'omi'e xarmuj.

noda jitfu .ije roda se curmi

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#2038
6:36 AM Wed 8 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: "what i have for  dinner"
 From:  John Cowan

From: John Cowan jcowa-@reutershealth.com

And Rosta wrote:

> This is getting into greater subtleties than I'd originally
> intended. I wonder whether it is "know" that is complicating
> things here, rather than interrogativity per se.

It almost certainly is.  To paraphrase Ursula LeGuin, I can take
a little indirect-question, or a little epistemology, but the
combination is poison.

> Indeed. Oddly, I'm not aware of a profusion of studies of their
> semantics in the linguistics literature.

That's because many people don't think there's a problem, and the
few who do know that it is intractable.  (I found this out via
Linguist List some years ago.)

> I think my former rendition of "know who came" as "for every x, know
> whether x came" (with a further step to translate "whether" into
> logical form) was simpler than what we are proposing here, but I
> never got it to generalize to nonepistemic examples like the
> insurance premium ones above.

Let us consider "wonder", which is nonepistemic.  If I wonder who came
to the party, it does not follow that (Ax) (I wonder whether X came).
For example, I do not wonder whether Julius Caesar came, or the planet Mars,
or the number 4.

--

Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis vom dies! || John Cowan jcowa-@reutershealth.com
Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau,  || http://www.reutershealth.com
Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau,           || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Und trank die Milch vom Paradies.            -- Coleridge (tr. Politzer)

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#2039
8:49 AM Wed 8 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: Begining the trek to  Lojbanistan...
 From:  pycy-

From: pycy-@aol.com

As a worldclass authority (by experience only) at learning Loglan/Lojban, my
suggestion is to try what I do everytime I learn this critter: pick something
to write (usually translate -- but stay away from the Laotzu and Shakespeare,
please) and charge into it, looking up what I need as I go along and back
checking occasionally.  Then send the whole thing off to the list to receive
several time the size of the original in corrections and corrections to those
and ....  Then try another piece, absorbing what you have heard from the list
and checking as you go along.  AND join the fun on the list of jumping on the
guy starting up just behind you (and eventually on the guys who jumped on you
-- even great Homer nods).  Have a ball!
pc

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#2040
8:49 AM Wed 8 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: "What I have for  dinner depends on what
 From:  pycy-
From: pycy-@aol.com

What there is on the semantics of indirect questions in the linguistic (or,
better, logic) end of things is an appendix to the stuff on (direct)
questions.  The lead names here are Belnap and Harrah and the lead theory is
that a question is the set of its proper answers (full sentences, by and
large, since those are easier for logic to deal with).  Some purists
(Montagovians, by and large) hold out for the set of true answers, but that
does not work as well for indirect questions.   To be sure, in the case of
"know," we want to partition the set of answers into the true ones, all of
which the knower knows, and the false ones, none of which he even believes
(though he may also not even believe their denials in the case of unknown
potential, but not actual, party goers).  On the other hand,  with, say,
"wonder" the whole set is involved apparently and the issue just what the
partition is.
By the way, what is the restriction on preds that can take an indirect
question? We can know or wonder also sorts of them, but we can't believe one
(but then how about "You won't believe who I saw yesterday"?) or think or
claim or ..., all of which take regular indirect discourse.
pc

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#2041
9:07 AM Wed 8 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: le selsa'a
 From:  pycy-

From: pycy-@aol.com

In a message dated 12/7/99 11:02:00 PM CST, recipro-@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca
writes:

<< One thing: How do numbers work in lujvo? I'm trying to work out a word for
 "paranoid", and "rolte'a" came to mind, with the intended meaning
 "fearful of everything" -- but does that work?>>
Someone else with have to comment on whether the compound is well-formed, but
the idea seems poor for paranoia as opposed to pantophobia.  Paranoia is
believing that one is the subject of universal murderous jealousy -- one is
so marvelous that everyone else is out to get one.  I leave the lexing to you.
pc


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#2042
11:25 AM Wed 8 Dec 99
 Subject:  prosa gutci lipano
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

mi senva la'edi'e .itu'e blabi dinju lenu zasyxa'u .i lamji
le xamsi .i jipno ko'agoi le galkoi .i ko'egoi so'i remna
ze'i vitke fi le dinju .i ko'e ri klama mu'i lenu ge viska
ko'a gi pensi lemu'e farlu .i lebi'u xrula tricu cu jbini le
dinju .e le korbi .i milxe xunre xrula tu'u

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#2043
11:29 AM Wed 8 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: banzu  xireci
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

lemi cevni nu'o morna ganzu je daspo pruce

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#2044
3:25 PM Wed 8 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re:  "what i have for dinner"
 From:  And Rosta
From: "And Rosta" a.rost-@pmail.net

> From: John Cowan jcowa-@reutershealth.com
>
> And Rosta wrote:
>
> > This is getting into greater subtleties than I'd originally
> > intended. I wonder whether it is "know" that is complicating
> > things here, rather than interrogativity per se.
>
> It almost certainly is.  To paraphrase Ursula LeGuin, I can take
> a little indirect-question, or a little epistemology, but the
> combination is poison.
>
> > Indeed. Oddly, I'm not aware of a profusion of studies of their
> > semantics in the linguistics literature.
>
> That's because many people don't think there's a problem, and the
> few who do know that it is intractable.  (I found this out via
> Linguist List some years ago.)

I don't remember any discussion on Linguist about that. If you
could exercise a bit of your detective genius & locate it for me
somewhere I'd be very very grateful.

> > I think my former rendition of "know who came" as "for every x, know
> > whether x came" (with a further step to translate "whether" into
> > logical form) was simpler than what we are proposing here, but I
> > never got it to generalize to nonepistemic examples like the
> > insurance premium ones above.
>
> Let us consider "wonder", which is nonepistemic.  If I wonder who came
> to the party, it does not follow that (Ax) (I wonder whether X came).
> For example, I do not wonder whether Julius Caesar came, or the
> planet Mars, or the number 4.

On the other hand, it could be argued that if I wonder who came then
it does follow that "I want that (Ax) (I know whether x came)".

Perhaps "We decided who was to be invited" is more definitely not
epistemic.

I haven't found the peace of mind to contemplate the problem yet, &
will reply to others' suggestions when I have.

--And.

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#2045
4:20 PM Wed 8 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: le selsa'a
 From:  recipro-

From: recipro-@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca

la pycyn. pu ciska di'e

> In a message dated 12/7/99 11:02:00 PM CST, recipro-@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca
> writes:
>
> << One thing: How do numbers work in lujvo? I'm trying to work out a word for
>  "paranoid", and "rolte'a" came to mind, with the intended meaning
>  "fearful of everything" -- but does that work?>>
> Someone else with have to comment on whether the compound is well-formed, but
> the idea seems poor for paranoia as opposed to pantophobia.  Paranoia is
> believing that one is the subject of universal murderous jealousy -- one is
> so marvelous that everyone else is out to get one.  I leave the lexing to you.
Ahhh... I vaguely remember something like that now. Hm. Perhaps something
like "mujyjilrykri" (world-jelaous-belief)? Not exactly the most beautiful
word ever made, though...

        co'omi'e xarmuj.

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#2046
5:16 PM Wed 8 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: le  selsa'a
 From:  michael helsem
From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

stidi zo xarbradyfenki

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#2047
9:41 PM Wed 8 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: re: le selsa'a
 From:  recipro-

From: recipro-@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca

> stidi zo xarbradyfenki
ri goi ko'a logji xamgu .i mi jinvi le du'u mi pilno ko'a

        co'omi'e xarmuj.

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#2048
1:45 AM Thu 9 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: Begining the trek to  Lojbanistan...
 From:  Robin Turner

From: Robin Turner robi-@bilkent.edu.tr

"A. R. Goldman" wrote:
>
> From: "A. R. Goldman" argoldma-@mindspring.com
>
> Greetings:
> I picked up my copy of the Lojban grammar on Saturday, and was
> informed that it was rather dense... I am enjoying it enormously,
> but wondered if any of the more experienced Lojbanists might give
> me a bit of guidance as to the best way to proceed with learning
> the language... Is it best to tackle the grammar head on... or to
> approach the Grammar book in another order than that in the table
> of contents?  Also, is the textbook available in a hard copy, or
> only on the web?
> Thanks for your help... I look forward to posting in Lojban...


You might find it easier to start off with the draft textbook
(available from the main Lojban site) or my beginners' course. (
http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin/lojbancourse.html ) The latter
is in progress (or rather not progressing at the moment due to
other pressures).  The curent state is

Lessons 1-3 : Stable version, all major points corrected.
Lessons  4-6 : Beta version, a lot of typos, and some revision
required, but no major changes anticipated.  Should have stable
version out in a few weeks.
Lesson 7: Alpha version, use at your own risk!
Lesson 8 : incomplete.

There will probably be about 12 lessons in all, but to be honest
it will probably take me so long to get these written, commented
on and corrected that you could probably memorise the whole of
The Complete Lojban Language in the same time-period.

I'd suggest doing at least a few lessons of one course or the
other to get the basics, then going back to The Complete Lojban
Language and looking up the parts of the grammar that interest
you most.  The good thing about Lojban grammar is that you only
need to use the parts you want to.  Once you've got the basic
sentence structure, the rest is optional.


co'o mi'e robin.

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#2049
2:05 AM Thu 9 Dec 99
 Subject:  More about questions and  the like (was:What I hav
 From:  pycy-

From: pycy-@aol.com

The "for all x, if x went to the party then John knows that x went to the
party (perhaps with a relative completeness guarantee or something like "and
if x did not go to the party then John does not believe that x went to the
party") has to be used with care.  One should not infer from it that, if Paul
went to the party, John knows that Paul went to the party, at least in the
sense that if John is asked "Did Paul go to the party?" he will say yes, even
if he is being as cooperative as possible.  the problem is the intensionality
of "know," for John may not know Paul under the name "Paul" and may even know
him under the mistaken guise "Bill's father" (when he is actually Joan's
father).  To be sure, the quantifier outside the context guarantees that the
generality is indifferent to the disguises, but the individual cases have no
such obvious external connection.  We need either explicitly write "under
some concepty" somewhere here or flag the cases with the opposite of subject
raising (which I think Lojban has).  The set-of-answers version of questions
does not work so well in this case, unless the questions are subdivided into
identity  classes and all that is required is that John know at least one
member of each of the appropriate classes.

A couple pages on from this point in the Handbook of Philosophic (i.e.,
freaky) Logic is the reminder that every natural language sentence is a
dependent of a (usually unexpressed) performative, usually "I tell you that"
or some such.  However, some of these performatives may also be intensional,
in which case every term in the surface sentence is in that cloud-cuckoo-land
where Leibnitz's law fails along with existential generalization and
universal instantiation.  In particular, sentences mentioning non-existent
objects which are nonetheless held to be true are under performative like "I
now recite to you a bit of myth that..."  This being the case (and it sure
solves a lot of problems), Lojban needs to dig into its small stock of unused
cmavo for a flag of this sort for when context is not enough.  Remembering
that the term-length flag of this sort is something like tu'a, I suggest the
corresponding x form, xu'a.  this refers to a different enduring problem form
ages past.
pc

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#2050
11:01 AM Thu 9 Dec 99
 Subject:  prosa gutci lipapa
 From:  michael helsem
From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

vilti'a ctemidju .i mi'a co'a cikna .i di'inai cladu tanvru
.i gu'e ckana vreta gi judytirna .i carmi .i manci .i doi morna
ganzu jeja'a daspo pruce do'u ko milxe .i le bitmu cu to'e
rotsu .ice le remna cu xarbradyfenki simsa .ice le savru cu
tepygau .ice cenba dicra le mankytei

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#2051
11:10 AM Thu 9 Dec 99
 Subject:  banzu xiremu
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

naku xarbradyfenki jonai se bradi

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#2052
3:36 PM Thu 9 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: More about questions  and the like (was:What I
 From:  And Rosta

From: "And Rosta" a.rost-@pmail.net

> From: pycy-@aol.com
>
> The "for all x, if x went to the party then John knows that
> x went to the party (perhaps with a relative completeness
> guarantee or something like "and if x did not go to the
> party then John does not believe that x went to the party")
> has to be used with care.  One should not infer from it
> that, if Paul went to the party, John knows that Paul went
> to the party, at least in the sense that if John is asked
> "Did Paul go to the party?" he will say yes, even if he is
> being as cooperative as possible.  the problem is the
> intensionality of "know," for John may not know Paul under
> the name "Paul" and may even know him under the mistaken
> guise "Bill's father" (when he is actually Joan's
> father).  To be sure, the quantifier outside the context
> guarantees that the generality is indifferent to the
> disguises, but the individual cases have no such obvious
> external connection.  We need either explicitly write "under
> some concepty" somewhere here or flag the cases with the opposite
> of subject raising (which I think Lojban has).  The
> set-of-answers version of questions does not work so well in
> this case, unless the questions are subdivided into identity
> classes and all that is required is that John know at least one
> member of each of the appropriate classes.

I don't see that we're falling into this trap, at least on
the "for all x, John knows that x is..." treatment as opposed to
the set of answers one. This is precisely because the criterion
by which x is to be identified from whatever is not x is not
included within the proposition that John knows.

> A couple pages on from this point in the Handbook of Philosophic (i.e.,
> freaky) Logic is the reminder that every natural language sentence is a
> dependent of a (usually unexpressed) performative, usually "I
> tell you that" or some such.  However, some of these performatives
> may also be intensional, in which case every term in the surface
> sentence is in that cloud-cuckoo-land where Leibnitz's law fails along
> with existential generalization and universal instantiation.  In
> particular, sentences mentioning non-existent objects which are
> nonetheless held to be true are under performative like "I
> now recite to you a bit of myth that..."  This being the case
> (and it sure solves a lot of problems), Lojban needs to dig into its
> small stock of unused cmavo for a flag of this sort for when context is
> not enough.  Remembering that the term-length flag of this sort is
> something like tu'a, I suggest the corresponding x form, xu'a.
> this refers to a different enduring problem form ages past.

I don't understand the problem or the proposed solution. Or at least,
I am aware that performatives are necessary, but assuming they are
available (linguistically), then I see no outstanding problems. And
I don't see how you envisage {xu'a} working. What we need is a way
to identify (a) something as a performative, and (b) its scope. And
since the baseline has been set, all we can actually do is ask "do
(a) and (b) exist?".

--And.

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#2053
9:19 PM Thu 9 Dec 99
 Subject:  Fwd: [lojban] Begining  the trek to Lojbanistan...
 From:  bestat-
In a message dated 12/9/1999 4:49:12 AM Eastern Standard Time,
robi-@bilkent.edu.tr writes:

> The good thing about Lojban grammar is that you only
>  need to use the parts you want to.  Once you've got the basic
>  sentence structure, the rest is optional.

optional up to the point where someone else uses it, and you want to
understand what they've said.

steven
Date: Thu, 09 Dec 1999 11:42:08 +0200
From: Robin Turner robi-@bilkent.edu.tr
Organization: Bilkent University
To: "lojba-@onelist.com" lojba-@onelist.com
Mailing-List: list lojba-@onelist.com; contact lojban-owne-@onelist.com
Subject: Re: [lojban] Begining the trek to Lojbanistan...

#2054
6:26 AM Fri 10 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: "what i have for  dinner"
 From:  John Cowan

From: John Cowan jcowa-@reutershealth.com

And Rosta wrote:

> I don't remember any discussion on Linguist about that. If you
> could exercise a bit of your detective genius & locate it for me
> somewhere I'd be very very grateful.

No actual discussion, just Q (mine) and summary (mine). See
http://linguistlist.org/issues/3/3-504.html#4 and
http://linguistlist.org/issues/3/3-525.html#1 respectively.

> On the other hand, it could be argued that if I wonder who came then
> it does follow that "I want that (Ax) (I know whether x came)".

I think this is an excessively robust kind of wondering.  If I wonder
who wrote the book of love (from a doo-wop song, full lyric
available at http://www.fiftiesweb.com/lyrics/booklove.htm), it does
not follow that I actually want to know this: my curiosity may be
quite idle.

--

Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis vom dies! || John Cowan jcowa-@reutershealth.com
Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau,  || http://www.reutershealth.com
Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau,           || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Und trank die Milch vom Paradies.            -- Coleridge (tr. Politzer)

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#2055
9:29 AM Fri 10 Dec 99
 Subject:  Journal  of Linguistics review
 From:  And Rosta
From: "And Rosta" a.rost-@pmail.net

This may have got mentioned previously, but just in case:

A recent issue of Journal of Linguistics had a positive 1 page
review by Geoff Sampson of the Woldemar Codex. The main points
were that Lojban was evidently invented by people who knew
their stuff, linguistically, and that if people really do
make a go of using Lojban as a language then this will be
of interest to linguistics in general. Sampson is a bit of
a maverick, so I don't suppose that many will have paid
attention, but on the other hand he doesn't suffer fools
gladly, so his endorsement is something to be pleased about.

--And.

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#2056
11:28 AM Fri 10 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re:  Journal of Linguistics review
 From:  John Cowan

From: John Cowan jcowa-@reutershealth.com

And Rosta wrote:

> A recent issue of Journal of Linguistics had a positive 1 page
> review by Geoff Sampson of the Woldemar Codex.

He sent LLG a preprint, but didn't know when it would appear.
Can you dig up the issue and give us a proper reference?
(I first read this as "page 1 review" and was rather more
pleased than the situation in fact justified!)

> Sampson is a bit of a maverick,

How does he compare on the maverick scale to Alexis Manaster-Ramer,
who has also given us favorable attention?

> but on the other hand he doesn't suffer fools
> gladly, so his endorsement is something to be pleased about.

I was, indeed.

--

Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis vom dies! || John Cowan jcowa-@reutershealth.com
Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau,  || http://www.reutershealth.com
Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau,           || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Und trank die Milch vom Paradies.            -- Coleridge (tr. Politzer)

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#2057
2:07 AM Sat 11 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: More about questions  and the like (was:What I
 From:  pycy-

From: pycy-@aol.com

Problem 1: Given "for x, if x went to the party, then John knows thatx went
to the party" and that Paul went to the party, we might infer  "John knows
that Paul went to the party."  This sentence is ambiguous and the most likely
reading (it is usually said) may well be false. since John may never have
heard of Paul as such and may have him under a totally wrong-headed
description, so that we might never find out from John that Paul was there,
even though he knows of the man who is in fact Paul - whoever John may think
him to be -- that he  went to the party.  The set of answers solution for
questions needs quite a bit of extra work work to be addapted to indirect
questions (and propositional attitudes generally).  Like including mappings
from the world to the belief worlds involved, for this one.  And several
other things for the other ones.
Problem 2.  From "Pegasus was the winged horse captured by Bellerophon" being
true, it is automatic to infer "There was a winged horse" and thence "Winged
horses have existed."  But they haven't.  The role of xu'a or whatever is
simply to prevent these inferences in the cases where context does not (and
so should always be used, just in case).  It does not say which performative
is involved, only that it is opaquifying and that the ordinary rules thus do
not apply  -- in particular, names need not denote.  The alternatives -- in a
logical language -- are to make obvious truths false or to allow truth value
gaps or to deny the usual rules; none of these are impossible but all are
unpleasant.
pc

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#2058
6:45 AM Sat 11 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: "what i have for  dinner"
 From:  And Rosta

From: "And Rosta" a.rost-@pmail.net

> From: John Cowan jcowa-@reutershealth.com
>
> And Rosta wrote:
>
> > I don't remember any discussion on Linguist about that. If you
> > could exercise a bit of your detective genius & locate it for me
> > somewhere I'd be very very grateful.
>
> No actual discussion, just Q (mine) and summary (mine). See
> http://linguistlist.org/issues/3/3-504.html#4 and
> http://linguistlist.org/issues/3/3-525.html#1 respectively.

I remembered them when I read them. Hard to imagine it was 1992.

Anyway, your question is more "how do languages express what in
English are indirect interrogatives", whereas what I'm after is
"what do indirect interrogatives mean, logically". I note pc's
pointers to some literature. Mind you, I'll be mightily pissed
off if they simply posit a WH quantifier, which is the usual
strategy, & strikes me as a copout.

> > On the other hand, it could be argued that if I wonder who came then
> > it does follow that "I want that (Ax) (I know whether x came)".
>
> I think this is an excessively robust kind of wondering.  If I wonder
> who wrote the book of love (from a doo-wop song, full lyric
> available at http://www.fiftiesweb.com/lyrics/booklove.htm), it does
> not follow that I actually want to know this: my curiosity may be
> quite idle.

OK, but wondering decomposes into some kind of trying/wanting with
respect to some kind of epistemic state. Whether or not we can find
appropriate expressions for those in English, _X wonder P_ nonetheless
means "X dweeble that X beeble that P", where "dweeble" is some kind
of trying/wanting and "beeble" is some kind of epistemic state.

I couldn't be arsed to look up the doo-wop song URL, so sang myself
"Sea of Love" instead.

--And.

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#2059
6:45 AM Sat 11 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: Journal of  Linguistics review
 From:  And Rosta

From: "And Rosta" a.rost-@pmail.net

> From: John Cowan jcowa-@reutershealth.com
>
> And Rosta wrote:
>
> > A recent issue of Journal of Linguistics had a positive 1 page
> > review by Geoff Sampson of the Woldemar Codex.
>
> He sent LLG a preprint, but didn't know when it would appear.
> Can you dig up the issue and give us a proper reference?
> (I first read this as "page 1 review" and was rather more
> pleased than the situation in fact justified!)

It'll be a while before I make it into a library. The review
is in fact right at the end, as the solitary Shorter Notice
in the journal (which tends not to publish Shorter Notices).

> > Sampson is a bit of a maverick,
>
> How does he compare on the maverick scale to Alexis Manaster-Ramer,
> who has also given us favorable attention?

The maverick scale is multidimensional so it's hard to say.
Tentatively, GS scores more mavs, while on the getting-people's-
backs-up scale, AMR scores more GPBUs over the last ten years
with the situation reversed prior to that.

They're both undeniably very clever people.

The only endorsement of Loglan/Lojban (it was Loglan, actually)
by a professional linguist that I have ever witnessed (at a
conference) was by someone who either by virtue of their own
intellect or their national intellectual culture struck me as
very much not an undeniably clever person.

> > but on the other hand he doesn't suffer fools
> > gladly, so his endorsement is something to be pleased about.
>
> I was, indeed.

--And.

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#2060
8:41 AM Sat 11 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: More about  questions and the like (was:What I
 From:  And Rosta

From: "And Rosta" a.rost-@pmail.net

> From: pycy-@aol.com
>
> Problem 1: Given "for x, if x went to the party, then
> John knows thatx went to the party" and that Paul went
> to the party, we might infer "John knows that Paul
> went to the party."  This sentence is ambiguous and the
> most likely reading (it is usually said) may well be
> false. since John may never have heard of Paul as such
> and may have him under a totally wrong-headed
> description, so that we might never find out from John
> that Paul was there, even though he knows of the man
> who is in fact Paul - whoever John may think him to be
> -- that he  went to the party.  The set of answers
> solution for questions needs quite a bit of extra work
> work to be addapted to indirect questions (and
> propositional attitudes generally).  Like including mappings
> from the world to the belief worlds involved, for this one.
> And several other things for the other ones.
> Problem 2.  From "Pegasus was the winged horse captured by
> Bellerophon" being true, it is automatic to infer "There
> was a winged horse" and thence "Winged horses have
> existed."  But they haven't.  The role of xu'a or whatever
> is simply to prevent these inferences in the cases where
> context does not (and so should always be used, just in
> case).  It does not say which performative is involved,
> only that it is opaquifying and that the ordinary rules
> thus do not apply  -- in particular, names need not
> denote.  The alternatives -- in a logical language --
> are to make obvious truths false or to allow truth value
> gaps or to deny the usual rules; none of these are
> impossible but all are unpleasant.

It seems to me that both problems are avoidable by treating
names as predicates (which IMO is right & proper).

Hence

   "Paul went to the party"
   = "x is-Paul & x went-to-the-party"

And the formula "for every x, if x went to the party, then
John knows that x went to the party" thus no more entitles
one to conclude

  "john knows that x is-Paul & x went-to-the-party"

than to conclude

  "John knows that x is-overweight and x went-to-the-party"

on the basis of

  "x is-overweight and x went-to-the-party"

Likewise, for the second problem,

  "Pegasus was the winged horse captured by Bellerophon"
  = "for every x, if x is-Pegasus then x
    is-the-winged-horse-captured-by-Bellerophon"

-- and the universal quantification doesn't license the
inferences "There was a winged horse" and "Winged horses have
existed."

--And.

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#2061
10:36 AM Sat 11 Dec 99
 Subject:  prosa  gutci lipare
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

.a'i.a'esai nu bajra .i nu bajra fi le malgri .i go'i le kalsa
danmo .i go'i le xarbradi .i go'i le fatci ckape .i go'i le
vlile tcima .i go'i le kijydru grestu .i go'i le vinji nuzba
.i go'i le to'e tivni munje .i go'i le danlu remna .i go'i le
banli preti .i go'i le kampu valsi .i go'i le zu'o bajra .i
go'i le zazycau be lo zdani .i go'i le nu casnu le cimni cmalu
.i mi bajra .i mi na bajra .i zu'o bajra sutra

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#2062
12:02 PM Sat 11 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: More about  questions and the like (was:What I
 From:  Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org


>From: pycy-@aol.com
>
>Problem 1: Given "for x, if x went to the party, then John knows thatx went
>to the party" and that Paul went to the party, we might infer  "John knows
>that Paul went to the party."  This sentence is ambiguous and the most likely
>reading (it is usually said) may well be false. since John may never have
>heard of Paul as such and may have him under a totally wrong-headed
>description, so that we might never find out from John that Paul was there,
>even though he knows of the man who is in fact Paul - whoever John may think
>him to be -- that he  went to the party.  The set of answers solution for
>questions needs quite a bit of extra work work to be addapted to indirect
>questions (and propositional attitudes generally).  Like including mappings
>from the world to the belief worlds involved, for this one.  And several
>other things for the other ones.

I think at one point that we decided that intentional descriptions and
names are from the point of view of the speaker (bearing in mind the
listener), so that if I use "la djan" in a sentence, the only thing that
matters is whether I and the listener know who John is, not whether le
djuno uses that name (or description) as part of lenu le djuno cu djuno.

>Problem 2.  From "Pegasus was the winged horse captured by Bellerophon" being
>true, it is automatic to infer "There was a winged horse" and thence "Winged
>horses have existed."  But they haven't.

This sounds like our ancient overly-discussed veridical unicorn
problem.  You know - whether "lo iunikorn" is equivalent to "da poi
iunikorn" thereby claiming that at least one unicorn exists.  Are you now
suggesting xu'a as a resolution to this issue, or are you suggesting xu'a
to kick us into some imaginary world when no otherwise stated.

I'm not sure how any of this ties into performatives, or whether we need to
start seeking boxes again zo'o.

lojbab
----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.

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#2063
12:11 PM Sat 11 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re:  "what i have for dinner"
 From:  Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org

At 02:50 PM 12/11/99 +0000, And Rosta wrote:
> > > On the other hand, it could be argued that if I wonder who came then
> > > it does follow that "I want that (Ax) (I know whether x came)".
> >
> > I think this is an excessively robust kind of wondering.  If I wonder
> > who wrote the book of love (from a doo-wop song, full lyric
> > available at http://www.fiftiesweb.com/lyrics/booklove.htm), it does
> > not follow that I actually want to know this: my curiosity may be
> > quite idle.
>
>OK, but wondering decomposes into some kind of trying/wanting with
>respect to some kind of epistemic state. Whether or not we can find
>appropriate expressions for those in English, _X wonder P_ nonetheless
>means "X dweeble that X beeble that P", where "dweeble" is some kind
>of trying/wanting and "beeble" is some kind of epistemic state.

I understand "I wonder who came" as "mi kucli le nu makau cmima le'i klama"
which I gues puts me in the set membership camp for at least this aspect of
indirect questions.  Note that le'i implies that set that I am curious
about quite intensional; I have no curiosity about the ants, flies, or
bacteria who might have come.

lojbab (probably sticking his nose in where he cannot possibly understand).

----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.

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#2064
3:18 PM Sat 11 Dec 99
 Subject:  indirect questions
 From:  bestat-

From: bestat-@aol.com

For "John knows who came", why not transform it to
"John knows the answer to the question 'Who came?' ?" and use something like
la djan. djuno le danfu be lu ma klama

The equivalent transformation for
"Johns wonders who came" might be
"John wonders what the answer to the question 'Who came?' is." or
"John wonders about the answer to the question 'Who came?' ."
la djan. kucli le danfu be lu ma klama

No logic is involved, no kau, just simple transformations.

Why doesn't this work?

Steven

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#2065
5:32 PM Sat 11 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: "what i have for  dinner"
 From:  And Rosta

From: "And Rosta" a.rost-@pmail.net

> From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org
>
> At 02:50 PM 12/11/99 +0000, And Rosta wrote:
> >
> >OK, but wondering decomposes into some kind of trying/wanting with
> >respect to some kind of epistemic state. Whether or not we can find
> >appropriate expressions for those in English, _X wonder P_ nonetheless
> >means "X dweeble that X beeble that P", where "dweeble" is some kind
> >of trying/wanting and "beeble" is some kind of epistemic state.
>
> I understand "I wonder who came" as "mi kucli le nu makau cmima
> le'i klama" which I gues puts me in the set membership camp for at
> least this aspect of indirect questions.

Not really, becaue you've left the {kau} in, and we'd all agree
that {da klama} = {da cmima le'i klame}.

What we're looking for is a way to say it without {kau}, ideally a
method that generalizes to cover all Q-{kau} uses. For example,
"John knows who came" = "Ax x came iff John knows x came" (a
nongeneralizing method, alas).

> Note that le'i implies that set that I am curious
> about quite intensional; I have no curiosity about the ants, flies, or
> bacteria who might have come.
>
> lojbab (probably sticking his nose in where he cannot possibly
> understand).

The problem is more merely-difficult than arcane.

BTW, I still haven't properly digested all earlier responses on this
thread; I'm not just ignoring them.

--And.

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#2066
2:08 AM Sun 12 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re:  "what i have for dinner"
 From:  pycy-
From: pycy-@aol.com

<< > On the other hand, it could be argued that if I wonder who came then
 > it does follow that "I want that (Ax) (I know whether x came)".

 I think this is an excessively robust kind of wondering.  If I wonder
 who wrote the book of love (from a doo-wop song, full lyric
 available at http://www.fiftiesweb.com/lyrics/booklove.htm), it does
 not follow that I actually want to know this: my curiosity may be
 quite idle.  >>
"Wonder" is inherently a weak kind of inquiry: one can 'just wonder' as a
dismissal of any question in a way that one can 'just investigate',' say,
only in contrast with very serious action, like seeking indictments.  But
more importantly, "I wonder who..." can't be "for all x, I wonder whether
x..." since there are a lot of x's that I do not know or believe about, and
many that I actively believe do not exist.  I no more wonder about them than
I do about the many others that I am convinced do not ... .  Note that the
"whether" also requires both the negative and the positive answers, whereas
the original seeks only the positive, though negative ones help, of course.
Putting the quantifier inside the "want"  (or, for "wonder," "sorta like")
may help some, since those already move into opaque realms, though different
ones from the realm of "know" (I can want something I know does not exist --
and often do).
pc

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#2067
10:58 AM Sun 12 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: indirect questions
 From:  John Cowan

From: John Cowan cowa-@locke.ccil.org

bestat-@aol.com scripsit:

> For "John knows who came", why not transform it to
> "John knows the answer to the question 'Who came?' ?"
[snip]
> Why doesn't this work?

Because you can't quantify into quotations.  A sentence like
"For every sheriff, John wonders who shot him" can't be translated
as you suggest.

--
John Cowan                                   cowa-@ccil.org
       I am a member of a civilization. --David Brin

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#2068
12:19 PM Sun 12 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: More  about questions and the like (was:What I
 From:  John Cowan

From: John Cowan cowa-@locke.ccil.org

pycy-@aol.com scripsit:

> Problem 1: Given "for x, if x went to the party, then John knows thatx went
> to the party" and that Paul went to the party, we might infer  "John knows
> that Paul went to the party."  This sentence is ambiguous and the most likely
> reading (it is usually said) may well be false. since John may never have
> heard of Paul as such and may have him under a totally wrong-headed
> description, so that we might never find out from John that Paul was there,

So on this view, "George knows that Tully was a Roman orator" is false
even if George assents to the proposition "Cicero was a Roman orator",
given that Cicero is Tully.  This seems a perverse reading to me;
I would take it as true.

> Problem 2.  From "Pegasus was the winged horse captured by Bellerophon" being
> true,

I grant the rest of your argument, but I deny this premise; I can't
accept that "P. was the winged horse" etc is just uncontroversially
true.  It needs to be qualified by something like "In the world of
Greek myth", and even the use of "world" is questionable, because it
is not clear that a mythical "world" might not contain logically
contradictory propositions.  In which case we need to talk about what
the Greek myths *say* in which case all bets are off, logically speaking.

--
John Cowan                                   cowa-@ccil.org
       I am a member of a civilization. --David Brin

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#2069
12:36 PM Sun 12 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re:  indirect questions
 From:  And Rosta

From: "And Rosta" a.rost-@pmail.net

> From: bestat-@aol.com
>
> For "John knows who came", why not transform it to
> "John knows the answer to the question 'Who came?' ?" and use
> something like
> la djan. djuno le danfu be lu ma klama
>
> The equivalent transformation for
> "Johns wonders who came" might be
> "John wonders what the answer to the question 'Who came?' is." or
> "John wonders about the answer to the question 'Who came?' ."
> la djan. kucli le danfu be lu ma klama
>
> No logic is involved, no kau, just simple transformations.
>
> Why doesn't this work?

Snags include

1. It just passes the problem, raising the question of the logical
structure of "x is answer to question y".

2. And anyway, it doesn't work:
   "Johns wonders who came"
   "John wonders about the answer to the question 'Who came?' ."
   The answer to the question is Jane (or "Jane")

ergo

  John wonders (about) Jane/"Jane"

-- not a desirable inference.

--And.

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#2070
4:38 PM Sun 12 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re:  indirect questions
 From:  recipro-

From: recipro-@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca


la .and pu ciske di'e

> Snags include
>
> 1. It just passes the problem, raising the question of the logical
> structure of "x is answer to question y".

I was going to respond to that, but then I thought too much and got a
headache...

> 2. And anyway, it doesn't work:
>    "Johns wonders who came"
>    "John wonders about the answer to the question 'Who came?' ."
>    The answer to the question is Jane (or "Jane")
>
> ergo
>
>   John wonders (about) Jane/"Jane"
>
> -- not a desirable inference.

One wonders whether a kau in a predicate like "kucli" has different
semantics than one somewhere else. Most other indirect questions can,
after all, be rewritten in the way BestATN suggests, regardless of whether
it helps.

        co'omi'e xarmuj.

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#2071
4:48 PM Sun 12 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: More about  questions and the like (was:What I
 From:  recipro-

From: recipro-@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca

On Sat, 11 Dec 1999, And Rosta wrote:

> Likewise, for the second problem,
>
>   "Pegasus was the winged horse captured by Bellerophon"
>   = "for every x, if x is-Pegasus then x
>     is-the-winged-horse-captured-by-Bellerophon"

I like it!

> -- and the universal quantification doesn't license the
> inferences "There was a winged horse" and "Winged horses have
> existed."

The problem is that we want to imply that there *are* winged horses, in a
certain context. Using the above, "Bellerophon was the winged horse
captured by Pegasus" would be equally true. In reality, of course, both
sentences do have equal truth values, but we want to indicate that we're
actually in a very particular fiction.

        co'omi'e xarmuj.

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#2072
5:35 PM Sun 12 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: indirect questions
 From:  pycy-

From: pycy-@aol.com

The transformation of an indirect question into someting about the answer to
a direct question won't work because the knower/wonderer/whatever may have no
attitude toward/understanding of the direct question involved.  If John is a
monlingual speaker of Chinese, he knows nothing of "Who went to the party?,"
an English question, and so doesn't even wonder about its answer.  There are
ways to solve this problem, which, however, generate new problems of a
similar but increasing complex sort, leading to an eternal regress of
languages.
pc

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#2073
5:36 PM Sun 12 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: More  about questions and the like (was:What I
 From:  pycy-

From: pycy-@aol.com

One names-as-predicates.  It is odd semantically: names usually (certainly in
English) don't have a sense, just a referent -- unlike predicates, which have
both -- and the referent is an object, not a set -- as it is for predicates.
On problem 2, using the nap approach makes all sentences about Pegasus true,
which is as objectionable in context as the non-denoting names approach that
makes them all false (or undefined).  Pegasus was the winged horse but
Pegasus was not a unicorn. With the xu'a approach, this sort can take place
without odd readings of names and as part of a general rule about intensional
operators, which we will need anyhow.

As for problem one, if John doesn't know Paul as Paul, he probably does not
know that he has the property is-Paul either and so not that something both
is Paul and went to the party, i.e., that Paul went to the party on the one
reading.  On the other hand, it probably does cover the other reading, that
there is something which is-Paul and John knows that it went to the party.
But this does not require the odd predicate is-Paul (rather reads it as "=
Paul") to work.  Indeed, that is one general solution for these cases, treat
"Paul" or whatever as an external "quantifier" to work in: in Lojban, set
some variable to "Paul" in the prefix: "For x = Paul, John knows that x went
to the party."  The problem is with the name inside the the intenly waysional
context, not outside.  The trick is always to disambiguate in the less likely
way  -- when the thing involved is real.  So the real trick is to know when
that is.
pc

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#2074
5:36 PM Sun 12 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: More about questions  and the like (was:What I
 From:  pycy-

From: pycy-@aol.com

<< I think at one point that we decided that intentional descriptions and
 names are from the point of view of the speaker (bearing in mind the
 listener), so that if I use "la djan" in a sentence, the only thing that
 matters is whether I and the listener know who John is, not whether le
 djuno uses that name (or description) as part of lenu le djuno cu djuno.>>

I wonder if we could have decided that and then could make it stick for lo se
djuno.  In a lot of cases, it is clearly important what concept/name is
involved in the clause: John knows that the number of planets is larger than
seven  has to be about the number of planets, not some other name of nine
(especially since John may not know it is nine) .  If John thinks that the
number of planets is eleven and knows that the number of players on a
football team (which he has right) is larger than seven, that will not count
as his knowing that the number of planets is larger than seven.  Similarly,
if John knows Paul under some wrongheaded description but knows that the
person he knows under that description went to the party, that may well count
for knowing that Paul went to the party.  My and your concepts don't seem to
count in any consistent way.


 <<This sounds like our ancient overly-discussed veridical unicorn
 problem.  You know - whether "lo iunikorn" is equivalent to "da poi
 iunikorn" thereby claiming that at least one unicorn exists.  Are you now
 suggesting xu'a as a resolution to this issue, or are you suggesting xu'a
 to kick us into some imaginary world when no otherwise stated.>>

Yes, that is, both: solving the probolem by kicking it into an imaginary
world not otherwise stated.

<< I'm not sure how any of this ties into performatives, or whether we need
to
 start seeking boxes again zo'o.>>
 Performatives are just a way of getting in the intensional contexts that
"seek" already provides for the boxes, but that are not apparent for loose
talk about Pegasus and unicorns.
pc

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#2075
7:01 PM Sun 12 Dec 99
 Subject:  glosser?
 From:  bestat-

From: bestat-@aol.com

What happened to the wonderful glosser program at
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/hezekiah/lojban/glossary.cgi

is it gone?
Steven

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#2076
7:58 PM Sun 12 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: glosser?
 From:  Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org

At 10:04 PM 12/12/99 -0500, you wrote:
>From: bestat-@aol.com
>
>What happened to the wonderful glosser program at
>http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/hezekiah/lojban/glossary.cgi
>
>is it gone?

Hezekiah graduated and lost his account.  I don't know if we can do cgi
scripts on the main Lojban site, but we are still working on updating
it.  I believe he said that any one else that grabbed a copy of the program
was welcome to put it up on their page.

lojbab
----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.

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#2077
2:08 AM Mon 13 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: More  about questions and the like (was:What I
 From:  pycy-

From: pycy-@aol.com

<< So on this view, "George knows that Tully was a Roman orator" is false
 even if George assents to the proposition "Cicero was a Roman orator",
 given that Cicero is Tully.  This seems a perverse reading to me;
 I would take it as true.>>

"George knows that Tully was a Roman orator" is ambiguous between our two
interpretations, and the one you dislike is usually said to be the normal
interpretation.  That however may be because it is the one that highlights
the usual intensional problems.  The trick is, does George assent to the
claim "Tully was a Roman orator"?  If he says, "I never heard of Tully" (as
he well might in spite of his remark about Cicero), then it is hard to see
him as knowing anything about Tully, for the rule is that mere actual
identities don't guarantee substitution in intensional contexts (essentially
a definition of same, in fact).  It is true that of the man who is in fact
Tully, George knows that h was a Roman orator, but that is somehting else
again (your -- less likely, they say -- reading).

 << >Problem 2.  From "Pegasus was the winged horse captured by Bellerophon"
being true,

 I grant the rest of your argument, but I deny this premise; I can't
 accept that "P. was the winged horse" etc is just uncontroversially
 true.  It needs to be qualified by something like "In the world of
 Greek myth", and even the use of "world" is questionable, because it
 is not clear that a mythical "world" might not contain logically
 contradictory propositions.  In which case we need to talk about what
 the Greek myths *say* in which case all bets are off, logically speaking.>>

That is the point of xu'a, to remind us that we are in some intensional
context like "Greek myths say."   We do treat such sentences as true and ones
like "Pegasus is a unicorn" as false without the warning, so, in a logical
language, we need the warning, either contextually or explicitly.

pc

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#2078
2:08 AM Mon 13 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: More about questions  and the like (was:What I
 From:  pycy-

From: pycy-@aol.com

<< > Likewise, for the second problem,
 >
 >   "Pegasus was the winged horse captured by Bellerophon"
 >   = "for every x, if x is-Pegasus then x
 >     is-the-winged-horse-captured-by-Bellerophon"

 I like it!>>
Why?  It doesn't solve this problem, for now we cannot infer from "John
Kennedy was a Democratic President" to "Some Democrat was Predisent." It also
makes all sentences about Pegasus true -- even though they are no longer
about Pegasus, for it screws up semantics, replacing reference to objects by
reference to singletons, and giving senses to words that don't got none,
like"Pegasus."
 pc
 <<> -- and the universal quantification doesn't license the
 > inferences "There was a winged horse" and "Winged horses have
 > existed."

 The problem is that we want to imply that there *are* winged horses, in a
 certain context. Using the above, "Bellerophon was the winged horse
 captured by Pegasus" would be equally true. In reality, of course, both
 sentences do have equal truth values, but we want to indicate that we're
 actually in a very particular fiction.>>

The point of xu'a.  (I am not at all sure that ther two sentences needs must
have the same truth value in reality, but that is a product of some
uncertainty about what truth value either has in reality.)

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#2079
7:12 AM Mon 13 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: More about  questions and the like (was:What I
 From:  John Cowan

From: John Cowan jcowa-@reutershealth.com

pycy-@aol.com wrote:

> One names-as-predicates.  It is odd semantically: names usually (certainly in
> English) don't have a sense, just a referent

Everybody says this since Frege, including And, but I still think that
the sense of "Fido" is "dog".

> With the xu'a approach, this sort can take place
> without odd readings of names and as part of a general rule about intensional
> operators, which we will need anyhow.

I don't think this works in general.   Consider the following statements:

        The _Arabian Nights_ was translated by Sir Richard Francis Burton.
        Scheherezade told a story about a genie and a fisherman.
        The genie threatened to kill the fisherman.

If the first sentence is true in the real world (it is), and the second
sentence demands xu'a, what does the third sentence demand? xu'axu'a?
No one simple trick will work for all cases.

--

Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis vom dies! || John Cowan jcowa-@reutershealth.com
Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau,  || http://www.reutershealth.com
Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau,           || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Und trank die Milch vom Paradies.            -- Coleridge (tr. Politzer)

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#2080
7:20 AM Mon 13 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: More about questions  and the like (was:What I
 From:  John Cowan
From: John Cowan jcowa-@reutershealth.com





pycy-@aol.com wrote:


#2081
8:33 AM Mon 13 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: More about questions  and the like (was:What I
 From:  John Cowan
From: John Cowan jcowa-@reutershealth.com





pycy-@aol.com wrote:







#2082
9:39 AM Mon 13 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re:  glosser?
 From:  the Edward Blevins

From: the Edward Blevins thedwar-@barsoom.net

>From: bestat-@aol.com
>
>What happened to the wonderful glosser program at
>http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/hezekiah/lojban/glossary.cgi
>
>is it gone?
>Steven

Hezekiah graduated, and thus will no longer have his account.

I have set up a copy of the hezekiah site at:
http://www.barsoom.net/lojban/hezekiah/

I've even got the glosser working:
http://www.barsoom.net/lojban/hezekiah/glossary.cgi

--
the Edward Blevins thedwar-@barssom.net

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#2083
10:23 AM Mon 13 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: More  about questions and the like (was:What I
 From:  Jorge Llambias

From: "Jorge Llambias" jjllambia-@hotmail.com


Here's another argument against the expansion,
"for all x, John knows that x is...", this time not involving
names.

Let's say this morning John bought two bottles of
milk and put them in the fridge, and just to make it
simpler let's say the fridge was otherwise empty.
Now, Mary tells John that she took one of the bottles
out of the fridge. She obviously doesn't tell him which
one, because nobody cares which one she took.

Does John know what is now in the fridge?
Yes, he knows that there is a bottle of milk in the fridge.

Is it true that for all x, John knows whether x is in the fridge?
No, he only knows that one of the two bottles that he
put in the fridge is there, but he doesn't know which
one (nor does he care).

So, in this case at least, we cannot take the quantifier out
of the intensional context.

co'o mi'e xorxes

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#2084
1:11 PM Mon 13 Dec 99
 Subject:  vocabulary...
 From:  A. R. Goldman
From: "A. R. Goldman" argoldma-@mindspring.com

Greetings, and thanks to those who kindly responded to my
previous posting...
If I could trouble the senior Lojbanists once more, though...
I have seen that flashcards for vocabulary were at one time
available. Do they still exist? I can't seem to access the
Logflash program, and felt that hard copy of the vocabulary would
be most useful... if the cards exist... or the list members have
other thoughts on speeding the learning of vocabulary, please let
me know...
Thanks...
ARGoldman

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#2085
1:24 PM Mon 13 Dec 99
 Subject:  an  addendum...
 From:  A. R. Goldman
From: "A. R. Goldman" argoldma-@mindspring.com

Well, I spoke too soon... and have found logflash... so it's a
start... but any other Vocabulary ideas are still most welcome...

Thanks
ARG

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#2086
7:13 PM Mon 13 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: More about questions  and the like (was:What I
 From:  Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org


>From: John Cowan jcowa-@reutershealth.com
>pycy-@aol.com wrote:
> > That is the point of xu'a, to remind us that we are in some intensional
> > context like "Greek myths say."   We do treat such sentences as true
> and ones
> > like "Pegasus is a unicorn" as false without the warning, so, in a logical
> > language, we need the warning, either contextually or explicitly.
>
>I grasp that now, but I think that we need full semantic world-setting,
>not just
>a syntactic marker.  Ray Smullyan's skeptic, after all, believes that the
>mental
>states he is experiencing now (while awake) are the same in kind as those he
>experiences while dreaming, merely at a different level --- he would not be
>surprised to "wake up" from this current life.

If we need full semantic world-setting, we should have it in the form of
sei metalinguistic parentheticals.  If there is an advantage to something
like xu'a (which is not clear) it would be for brevity.  At which point we
might find that one of the evidentials or attitudinals will suffice.  ka'u
or se'o, perhaps, may already be providing the role of xu'a.

lojbab
----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.

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#2087
7:20 PM Mon 13 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: vocabulary...
 From:  Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org

At 04:14 PM 12/13/99 -0500, A. R. Goldman wrote:
>From: "A. R. Goldman" argoldma-@mindspring.com
>Greetings, and thanks to those who kindly responded to my
>previous posting...
>If I could trouble the senior Lojbanists once more, though...
>I have seen that flashcards for vocabulary were at one time
>available. Do they still exist?

We still have a few sets of the flashcards.  They may not all have the
correct rafsi, and a few place structures changed, and a few gismu were
added (but there are some blank cards).  The price is still $10, as
advertised in the price list (everything in the price list is still
nominally available, but I'm sometimes slow about filling orders other than
for the book, and some of the hard copy stuff is, while not bad, lower in
quality than a printout of the online version would be.  Xeroxed 300dpi
laser print is not as good as many people can print these days.

lojbab


----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.

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#2088
7:38 AM Tue 14 Dec 99
 Subject:  xu'a
 From:  xod

From: xod xo-@bway.net

On Mon, 13 Dec 1999, Bob LeChevalier (lojbab) wrote:

> From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org

> like xu'a (which is not clear) it would be for brevity.  At which point we
> might find that one of the evidentials or attitudinals will suffice.  ka'u
> or se'o, perhaps, may already be providing the role of xu'a.


za'a zo xu'a na ma'oste zvati



-----
Ride a barrel down the falls, cook spaghetti with meatballs,
Really make your friends amazed, nuke them with some gamma rays,
Fly to Venus in a rocket, put your finger in a socket,
You may suffer from exhaust, but none of that entropy is lost!

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#2089
12:50 PM Tue 14 Dec 99
 Subject:  xu'a (hoo-ha?)
 From:  pycy-

From: pycy-@aol.com

Cowan:
<<pc> With the xu'a approach, this sort can take place
> without odd readings of names and as part of a general rule about
intensional
> operators, which we will need anyhow.

I don't think this works in general.   Consider the following statements:

    The _Arabian Nights_ was translated by Sir Richard Francis Burton.
    Scheherezade told a story about a genie and a fisherman.
    The genie threatened to kill the fisherman.

If the first sentence is true in the real world (it is), and the second
sentence demands xu'a, what does the third sentence demand? xu'axu'a?
No one simple trick will work for all cases.>>

Well, xu'a was suggested when the context may not be enough.  Surely this is
not such a
case here -- although Scheherezade is not explicitly put into the book in the
second
sentence.

cowan:
<<pc> > That is the point of xu'a, to remind us that we are in some
intensional
> > context like "Greek myths say."   We do treat such sentences as true
> and ones
> > like "Pegasus is a unicorn" as false without the warning, so, in a logical
> > language, we need the warning, either contextually or explicitly.
>
>I grasp that now, but I think that we need full semantic world-setting,
>not just
>a syntactic marker.  Ray Smullyan's skeptic, after all, believes that the
>mental
>states he is experiencing now (while awake) are the same in kind as those he
>experiences while dreaming, merely at a different level --- he would not be
>surprised to "wake up" from this current life.>>

xu'a is just meant to prevent quantifying and substituting into intensional
contexts, not to
be explicit about  exactly what intensional context is involved, since that
is often
unnecessary.  I think we have ways to be quit explicit -- and in wordy detail
-- when
needed.  As for Ray -- good Taoist that he is when needs be -- intensional
and real worlds
are relative to where you are: this world right now is real and the dream is
intensional,
should he awake, the situation will be reversed where he then is (assuming
butterflies --
or maybe Zwangzi -- have intensional states).

lojbab
<<If we need full semantic world-setting, we should have it in the form of
sei metalinguistic parentheticals.  If there is an advantage to something
like xu'a (which is not clear) it would be for brevity.  At which point we
might find that one of the evidentials or attitudinals will suffice.  ka'u
or se'o, perhaps, may already be providing the role of xu'a.>>

ka'u looks pretty good: it involves "know" and cultural sources, probably
just what the
short form requires.  Se'o seems more restricted, but might fit in cases
where one is not
appealing to general culture but to personal mythos (is that possible?).  But
in those
cases, the Gricean rules would usually require being explicit in the first
place.

pc

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#2090
12:51 PM Tue 14 Dec 99
 Subject:  Intensional contexts  etc.
 From:  pycy-

From: pycy-@aol.com

Cowan<<
>pc
lojbab<< I think at one point that we decided that intentional descriptions
and
>  names are from the point of view of the speaker (bearing in mind the
>  listener), so that if I use "la djan" in a sentence, the only thing that
>  matters is whether I and the listener know who John is, not whether le
>  djuno uses that name (or description) as part of lenu le djuno cu djuno.>>
>
> I wonder if we could have decided that and then could make it stick for lose
> djuno.  In a lot of cases, it is clearly important what concept/name is
> involved in the clause: John knows that the number of planets is larger than
> seven  has to be about the number of planets, not some other name of nine

But this is not a name in the sense meant above; it is a veridical description
of nine, not a name of nine.  I can say "John knows that George is greater
than
seven" if by "George" I mean "the number of planets" (quotes are mandatory
here).

> (especially since John may not know it is nine) .  If John thinks that the
> number of planets is eleven and knows that the number of players on a
> football team (which he has right) is larger than seven, that will not count
> as his knowing that the number of planets is larger than seven.

I agree with this.

> Similarly,
> if John knows Paul under some wrongheaded description but knows that the
> person he knows under that description went to the party, that may well
count
> for knowing that Paul went to the party.

This sounds like Bernard J. Ortcutt again.>>

Refresh my memory on Ortcutt, for the name sounds familiar but I can't place
the the
position involved. My point here is that in intensional contexts you are
stuck with the
way the the intender thinks of  things and so you cannot shift as you would
outside, but
you can shift as the intender would.  So, what he knows of x, who is in fact
y, may not
apply to y, but what he knows of z, who is not in fact but who he thinks is
y, may count
as about y.

cowan <<
pc> The trick is, does George assent to the
> claim "Tully was a Roman orator"?  If he says, "I never heard of Tully" (as
> he well might in spite of his remark about Cicero), then it is hard to see
> him as knowing anything about Tully,

This seems to contradict your other claim.  A monolingual German cannot assent
to the sentence "Snow is white", for it is mere gibberish for him, but that
does not mean that he does not know that snow is white.  Similarly, if
Gheorghe knows
that the man talking on the TV just now has brown hair, and the man in
question
is (all unknown to Gheorghe) Bill Clinton, then it seems to me extremely
arbitrary to deny that Gheorghe knows that Bill Clinton has brown hair, even
though
George would presumably (if he were a cautious logician type) not assent to
the
sentence "Bill Clinton has brown hair".  So what you would assent to is only
an indirect indication of what you believe or know.>>

The stuff about assent is primarily directed to the translation of "knows
what" as "knows
the answer to 'What ...?'"  But in the present case, which started with you
claim that
assenting to "Cicero was a Roman orator" was evidence that  he knew that
Cicero was a
Roman orator.  By parity, admitting that he never heard of Tully seems
evidence that he
knows nothing about Tully.  If he comes to know that Tully is Cicero, he will
come to
know a number of things about Tully, which he might then claim he had known
for a
long time, even though he got all the questions about the subject wrong when
he has
trying to do his best.  Similarly, as soon as George knows that the person on
TV is
Clinton, he can reasonably be said to know Clinton has brown hair.  Before
then he does
not (from the present evidence anyhow); he may not even know there is someone
named
Clinton, for all we know.
    Of course, this is all about short scope occurrences and English is
ambiguous on
scope (and it gets worse with nested contexts) and, in the cases where there
are no known
problems about existence and the like, one reading may be as reasonable as
the other.
But in Lojban they should be separated; some of the moves suggested have been
toward
collapsing them again.  But yes, of the man who is Tully, he knows that he
was a Roman
orator and of the man who is Clinton, George knows that he has brown hair.
And so on.

Cowan<<
> On names-as-predicates.  It is odd semantically: names usually (certainly in
> English) don't have a sense, just a referent

Everybody says this since Frege, including And, but I still think that
the sense of "Fido" is "dog".>>

Not "sense" in the right sense.  This more like what rhetoricians used to
call connotation
than what logicians call designation (except for Mill, who called it
connotation --
English! bah, humbug) .  It is the mass of cultural baggage that a word
carries with it
from habitual or stereotypic or whatever use, emotive color, expectations,
etc.  But none
of that is proper meaning -- it would not help you pick out the referent of
the name, even
"Fido,"  in any but the most artifical situations (just one dog and no weird
people's cats or
children).  But it does seem likely that names really do have a sense, though
it seems to
be very tightly tied to the name being the name and the conventions around
that fact.  In
any case, in intensional contexts, where Frege says the referent of singular
terms are their
ordinary designations, different names have different references (Hesperus and
Phosphorus being the historic examples) even when their ordinary denotations
are the
same.
pc

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#2091
12:03 AM Wed 15 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: xu'a (hoo-ha?)
 From:  recipro-

From: recipro-@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca

la pycyn. pu ciske di'e
> Se'o seems more restricted, but might fit in cases
> where one is not
> appealing to general culture but to personal mythos (is that possible?).

Hey, sure :). That's what chaos magic's all about. Albeit "ru'a" or
possibly "ju'o" would be more applicable to that...

        co'omi'e xarmuj.

Crime does not pay ... as well as politics.
                -- A. E. Newman

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#2092
2:10 AM Wed 15 Dec 99
 Subject:  (no subject)
 From:  pycy-

From: pycy-@aol.com

this was bounced on 12/10 -- maybe it clears something up?

 The "for x, if x went to the party then John knows that x went to the party"
 version (maybe with the added "and if x did not go to the party, John does
 not believe that x went to the party" or maybe with some other sort of
 relative completeness marker) must be used with care, because of the
 intensional nature of "know."  We should not infer from the fact that Paul
 went to the party that John will say "Yes" to the question "Did Paul go to
 the party?" even if John is totally truthful and cooperative, for he may not
 know Paul under the name "Paul."  So the real expansion seems to be
something
 like  "for every x there is a concept y which selects x such that John knows
 that (the referent of) y went to the party," etc.  The external
(extensional)
 quantifier on x should manage that, but once the substitution is made inside
 the intesional context, the external connection is lost or at least
weakened.
  This tends to separate indirect questions slightly from direct ones,
perhaps
 partitioning the answer set into equivalence classes with isosemic terms, at
 least one of which the knower knows.  But it is the knowers isosemy, for he
 may think that Paul is Bill's father and thus believe that Bill's father was
 at the party and that neither Paul, who he has never heard of, nor Joan's
 father, who isd who Paul really is.

 A couple of pages on from all of this in the Handbook of Philosophical
(i.e.,
 flaky) Logic is a reminder that every natural language sentence is the
 dependent of a (usually unexpressed) performative and that some of these
 performatives may also be intensional, putting all of the terms in the
 surface sentence into that never-never land where Leibniz's law doesn't work
 and existential generalization and universal instatiation don't work.  In
 particular, the suggestion is that all sentences that mention no existenct
 objects and that are held to be true are under such performative, say "I
 recite to you a myth that" or some such.  This being so (and it sure solves
a
 lot of problems), Lojban ought to dig into its small stock of unused cmavo
to
 come up with a sentence length warning flag, when context is not sufficient.
 Remembering that the term length form is something like tu'a, I suggest the
 corresponding form with x, xu'a?
 pc

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#2093
2:51 PM Wed 15 Dec 99
 Subject:  cnita preti
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

stidi lu mi djuno le danfu fo le klama cmene li'u .a

lu mi klama cmene preti danfu djuno li'u

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#2094
3:47 PM Wed 15 Dec 99
 Subject:  ko jundi
 From:  xod

From: xod xo-@bway.net

ki'u le nu do spofu le ti bafytel ku ku do tugni le mutymi'i flalu selsku
te curmi vi le ti tanxe

-----
Ride a barrel down the falls, cook spaghetti with meatballs,
Really make your friends amazed, nuke them with some gamma rays,
Fly to Venus in a rocket, put your finger in a socket,
You may suffer from exhaust, but none of that entropy is lost!

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#2095
6:59 PM Wed 15 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: ko jundi
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

ki'a .i xu de'u claxu paledo cmavo .i ji'a zo bafstela .anai
zo bafytel cu drani

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#2096
10:44 PM Wed 15 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: ci: ko jundi
 From:  xod

From: xod xo-@bway.net

On Wed, 15 Dec 1999, michael helsem wrote:

> From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com
>
> ki'a .i xu de'u claxu paledo cmavo .i ji'a zo bafstela .anai
> zo bafytel cu drani


ki'e .i do resi'e drani .i mi cusku sepi'o le zmadu cmavo lu

ki'u le nu do spofu be le ti bafytel ku ku [fa] do tugni le mutymi'i flalu
bo selsku te curmi be vi le ti tanxe

li'u .i ku'i mi na tugni le du'u zo bafytel ku na drani .i ma krinu





-----
Ride a barrel down the falls, cook spaghetti with meatballs,
Really make your friends amazed, nuke them with some gamma rays,
Fly to Venus in a rocket, put your finger in a socket,
You may suffer from exhaust, but none of that entropy is lost!

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#2097
2:10 AM Thu 16 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: xu'a (hoo-ha?)
 From:  pycy-

From: pycy-@aol.com

Well, both ru'a and ju'o are intensional enough, but they are both tentative
in a way that my original idea was not.  What is emerging here is that there
are already a number of cmavo that act as the hypothetical xu'a would have.
We need to do a search to find all of them and write up a note about them,
then I thionk we can sink the xu'a proposal.
pc

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#2098
5:20 AM Thu 16 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: ci: ko jundi
 From:  Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org

At 01:46 AM 12/16/99 -0500, xod wrote:
>.i ku'i mi na tugni le du'u zo bafytel ku na drani .i ma krinu

zo bafytel cu cmene .i do cusku ba'ezo le pe lo'u le ti bafytel le'u

co'omi'e lojbab .uepei
----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.

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#2099
11:36 AM Thu 16 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: ci: ko jundi
 From:  xod

From: xod xo-@bway.net

On Thu, 16 Dec 1999, Bob LeChevalier (lojbab) wrote:

> From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org
>
> At 01:46 AM 12/16/99 -0500, xod wrote:
> >.i ku'i mi na tugni le du'u zo bafytel ku na drani .i ma krinu
>
> zo bafytel cu cmene .i do cusku ba'ezo le pe lo'u le ti bafytel le'u


ki'e .i mi co'a jimpe le du'u le brivla ku nitcu su'o le jaklerfu girzu




-----
Ride a barrel down the falls, cook spaghetti with meatballs,
Really make your friends amazed, nuke them with some gamma rays,
Fly to Venus in a rocket, put your finger in a socket,
You may suffer from exhaust, but none of that entropy is lost!

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#2100
1:17 PM Thu 16 Dec 99
 Subject:  sera'a tu'alu ko jundi  li'u
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

ra'unai xu fo do puzi pinka le melo ninminji ke flalu velski
.i pe'i ri to'e vajni

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#2101
5:37 PM Thu 16 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: sera'a tu'alu ko  jundi li'u
 From:  xod

From: xod xo-@bway.net

On Thu, 16 Dec 1999, michael helsem wrote:

> From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com
>
> ra'unai xu fo do puzi pinka le melo ninminji ke flalu velski
> .i pe'i ri to'e vajni


cusku de'u cu'u le bakfu pe la kuaryk bau so'imei le bangu




-----
Ride a barrel down the falls, cook spaghetti with meatballs,
Really make your friends amazed, nuke them with some gamma rays,
Fly to Venus in a rocket, put your finger in a socket,
You may suffer from exhaust, but none of that entropy is lost!

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#2102
11:29 PM Thu 16 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: ci:  ko jundi
 From:  the Edward Blevins

From: the Edward Blevins thedwar-@barsoom.net

|From: xod xo-@bway.net
|
|On Thu, 16 Dec 1999, Bob LeChevalier (lojbab) wrote:
|
|> From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org
|>
|> At 01:46 AM 12/16/99 -0500, xod wrote:
|> >.i ku'i mi na tugni le du'u zo bafytel ku na drani .i ma krinu
|>
|> zo bafytel cu cmene .i do cusku ba'ezo le pe lo'u le ti bafytel le'u
|
|
|ki'e .i mi co'a jimpe le du'u le brivla ku nitcu su'o le jaklerfu girzu

.i pe'i le nu zo bafytel cmene ke jalge le du'u ro lo cmene .e no lo
brivla cu selfanmo lo jaklerfu
.i le jaklerfu girzu zvati zo bafytel seja'e le javni le nu me'o .ybu
na vajni le nu sisku le ka jaklerfu bo girzu

.i mi pacna le nu de'u pe mi seljimpe

.i co'o mi'e eduard

--
the Edward Blevins   thedwar-@barsoom.net    (512) 436-9576
/(0\         mi tavla fo la lojban .i xu do go'i?
\1)/ .i.e'u ko vitke fi zoi .url. http|//www.lojban.org .url.
Today is Prickle-Prickle, the 58th day of The Aftermath, 3165.

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#2103
11:41 PM Thu 16 Dec 99
 Subject:  sera'a tu'alu ko jundi  li'u
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

la kuaryk. mo .iji'a bakfu ma .i ki'asai .u'u

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#2104
12:15 AM Fri 17 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: sera'a tu'alu ko  jundi li'u
 From:  xod

From: xod xo-@bway.net

On Thu, 16 Dec 1999, michael helsem wrote:

> From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com
>
> ra'unai xu fo do puzi pinka le melo ninminji ke flalu velski
> .i pe'i ri to'e vajni


cusku de'u cu'u le bakfu pe la kuaryk bau so'imei le bangu




-----
Ride a barrel down the falls, cook spaghetti with meatballs,
Really make your friends amazed, nuke them with some gamma rays,
Fly to Venus in a rocket, put your finger in a socket,
You may suffer from exhaust, but none of that entropy is lost!

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#2105
12:20 AM Fri 17 Dec 99
 Subject:  Vo:  sera'a tu'alu ko  jundi li'u
 From:  xod

From: xod xo-@bway.net

On Thu, 16 Dec 1999, michael helsem wrote:

> From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com
>
> la kuaryk. mo .iji'a bakfu ma .i ki'asai .u'u
>


la kuaryk. cmene lo viska mutymi'i poi zbasu le papri pixra .i le bakfu
pe de'u cu mintu le bakfu pe la kuaryk.

.i mi zugyxe'u le do'o cfipu


-----
Ride a barrel down the falls, cook spaghetti with meatballs,
Really make your friends amazed, nuke them with some gamma rays,
Fly to Venus in a rocket, put your finger in a socket,
You may suffer from exhaust, but none of that entropy is lost!

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#2106
1:38 AM Fri 17 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: ci: ko jundi
 From:  Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org

At 11:18 PM 12/16/99 -0600, the Edward Blevins wrote:
>|From: xod xo-@bway.net
>|ki'e .i mi co'a jimpe le du'u le brivla ku nitcu su'o le jaklerfu girzu
>
>.i pe'i le nu zo bafytel cmene ke jalge le du'u ro lo cmene .e no lo
                           ^[cu]
>brivla cu selfanmo lo jaklerfu
>.i le jaklerfu girzu zvati zo bafytel seja'e le javni le nu me'o .ybu
                       ^cu
>na vajni le nu sisku le ka jaklerfu bo girzu
>
>.i mi pacna le nu de'u pe mi seljimpe

.i mi ja'a jimpe .i do drani cusku le fatci .ijeku'i do nitcu zo cu vi le
remoi pe de'u gi'e no'e nitcu zo cu vi le pamoi pe de'u

co'omi'e lojbab


----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.

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#2107
7:10 AM Fri 17 Dec 99
 Subject:  prosa gutci lipaci
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

ze'i le da'amoi surdje ku mi ranji lezu'o se burcu .i pilno
le crinypelxu .e le xunre .e le fadycrino .e le rusybla .i
pixra le flira pe lebi'u ponjo ke verba ke xajmi lisri .i ba'o
zbasu le cnita pixra .i ze'i le bazi surdje ku co'a pu'u se
burcu lei visygre sfesenta kuku.a'usai

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#2108
7:41 AM Fri 17 Dec 99
 Subject:  prosa  gutci lipavo
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

lo broda cei ciste co xanri xadnenri bo velski ce'o cu pilno
mintu le ciste co tarmo'a daltai .i broda fale menske ra'u

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#2109
6:46 AM Sun 19 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: More about questions  and the like (was:What I
 From:  And Rosta

From: "And Rosta" a.rost-@pmail.net

> From: recipro-@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca
>
> On Sat, 11 Dec 1999, And Rosta wrote:
>
> > Likewise, for the second problem,
> >
> >   "Pegasus was the winged horse captured by Bellerophon"
> >   = "for every x, if x is-Pegasus then x
> >     is-the-winged-horse-captured-by-Bellerophon"
>
> I like it!
>
> > -- and the universal quantification doesn't license the
> > inferences "There was a winged horse" and "Winged horses have
> > existed."
>
> The problem is that we want to imply that there *are* winged horses, in a
> certain context. Using the above, "Bellerophon was the winged horse
> captured by Pegasus" would be equally true. In reality, of course, both
> sentences do have equal truth values, but we want to indicate that we're
> actually in a very particular fiction.

Taking your basic point to be the need to distinguish the need for
different truth status for "P was the winged-horse captured by B"
and "B was the winged-horse captured by P", I'd propose:

   In all possible worlds consistent with Greek mythology,
   for every x, if x is-Pegasus then x is-the-winged-horse-captured-
   by-Bellerophon

--And.

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#2110
6:46 AM Sun 19 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: More about questions  and the like (was:What I
 From:  And Rosta

From: "And Rosta" a.rost-@pmail.net

> From: John Cowan jcowa-@reutershealth.com
>
> pycy-@aol.com wrote:
>
> > One names-as-predicates.  It is odd semantically: names usually
> > (certainly in English) don't have a sense, just a referent
>
> Everybody says this since Frege,

true

> including And,

false! I am in a tiny but correct minority. Note that pc was
responding to my statement that names shd be treated as predicates,
which is not (as far as I can see) compatible with the standard,
wrong "referent-but-no-sense" view. More on this in my reply to
pc.

> but I still think that the sense of "Fido" is "dog".

I'm not sure what exactly you mean, if this is intended to illustrate
an approach generalizing to all names.

--And.

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#2111
6:46 AM Sun 19 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: More about  questions and the like (was:What I
 From:  And Rosta

From: "And Rosta" a.rost-@pmail.net

> From: pycy-@aol.com
>
> One names-as-predicates.  It is odd semantically: names usually
> (certainly in English) don't have a sense, just a referent --
> unlike predicates, which have both -- and the referent is an
> object, not a set -- as it is for predicates.

3 reasons why names (certainly in English ;-) have sense.

1. Intensional contexts show them to behave logically like
   other predicates. (As discussed in this thread.)

2. The 'denotation' of a name is preserved in lexical derivation.
   E.g. "Cowanian" = "pertaining to John W. Cowan". It is standardly
   and correctly accepted that reference is a property of NPs, and
   not of morphological subconstituents of words. Hence the meaning
   "John W. Cowan" associated with the morpheme _Cowan_ must be
   its sense, not its reference.

3. Names and nonnames show parallel semantic behaviour; both occur
   in relatively more and less namey contexts:

   more namey:
         *John Cowan* wrote the refgram.
         *Blue* is my favourite colour.
         *Riesling* is a white wine.
         *B-flat* is an eccentric note.
         *Tuesday* is the second day of the week.
         *Ice* is a naturally-occurring form of water.
   less namey:
         the *teenage John Cowan*, not *the John Cowan of today*
         *the new slimline John Cowan*
         let's talk about *John Cowan the man*, not *John Cowan the legend*
         *a very disshevelled John Cowan* emerged from the cubicle

> On problem 2, using the nap approach makes all sentences about
> Pegasus true, which is as objectionable in context as the non-denoting
> names approach that makes them all false (or undefined).  Pegasus was
> the winged horse but Pegasus was not a unicorn. With the xu'a approach,
> this sort can take place without odd readings of names and as part of a
> general rule about intensional operators, which we will need anyhow.

I've addressed this in my reply to Reciproc. The solution is to make
the claim for all possible worlds that are consistent with Greek myth.

Or alternatively, and perhaps preferably, you should make two claims:

     For all possible worlds, for every x, if x is-Pegasus then x
        is-a-winged-horse
     In the world of Greek myth, Ex, x is-Pegasus.

> As for problem one, if John doesn't know Paul as Paul, he
> probably does not
> know that he has the property is-Paul either and so not that
> something both
> is Paul and went to the party, i.e., that Paul went to the party
> on the one
> reading.  On the other hand, it probably does cover the other
> reading, that
> there is something which is-Paul and John knows that it went to
> the party.
> But this does not require the odd predicate is-Paul (rather reads
> it as "=
> Paul") to work.

Exactly. I simply don't agree that is-Paul is significantly odder
than, say, is-hydrogen.

> Indeed, that is one general solution for these
> cases, treat
> "Paul" or whatever as an external "quantifier" to work in: in Lojban, set
> some variable to "Paul" in the prefix: "For x = Paul, John knows
> that x went
> to the party."  The problem is with the name inside the the
> intenly waysional
> context, not outside.  The trick is always to disambiguate in the
> less likely
> way  -- when the thing involved is real.  So the real trick is to
> know when
> that is.

A possible snag with your suggestion is the logical meaning of "For x =
Paul".
If you change it to "Ex x = Paul, & ..." or "Ax if x = Paul then ...", then
I
accept that it works, tho I still think it's not the Right Thing.

--And.

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#2112
6:46 AM Sun 19 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: More about questions  and the like (was:What I
 From:  And Rosta

From: "And Rosta" a.rost-@pmail.net

> From: pycy-@aol.com
>
> << > Likewise, for the second problem,
>  >
>  >   "Pegasus was the winged horse captured by Bellerophon"
>  >   = "for every x, if x is-Pegasus then x
>  >     is-the-winged-horse-captured-by-Bellerophon"
>
>  I like it!>>
> Why?  It doesn't solve this problem, for now we cannot infer from "John
> Kennedy was a Democratic President" to "Some Democrat was
> Predisent."

It's no different from "argon is an inert gas". If there's some way of
asserting that that gives the inference "some gas is inert", then exactly
the same way will do for "JFK was a Democrat President".

> It also
> makes all sentences about Pegasus true -- even though they are no longer
> about Pegasus, for it screws up semantics, replacing reference to
> objects by
> reference to singletons, and giving senses to words that don't got none,
> like"Pegasus."

See my other replies of today.


>  pc
>  <<> -- and the universal quantification doesn't license the
>  > inferences "There was a winged horse" and "Winged horses have
>  > existed."
>
>  The problem is that we want to imply that there *are* winged horses, in a
>  certain context. Using the above, "Bellerophon was the winged horse
>  captured by Pegasus" would be equally true. In reality, of course, both
>  sentences do have equal truth values, but we want to indicate that we're
>  actually in a very particular fiction.>>
>
> The point of xu'a.  (I am not at all sure that ther two sentences
> needs must have the same truth value in reality, but that is a product of
some
> uncertainty about what truth value either has in reality.)

We don't need {xu'a}. We just need ways of specifiying which subset of the
set
of all possible worlds it is that we are claiming our proposition to be true
of.

--And.

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#2113
6:46 AM Sun 19 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: More  about questions and the like (was:What I
 From:  And Rosta

From: "And Rosta" a.rost-@pmail.net

> From: "Jorge Llambias" jjllambia-@hotmail.com
>
> Here's another argument against the expansion,
> "for all x, John knows that x is...", this time not involving
> names.
>
> Let's say this morning John bought two bottles of
> milk and put them in the fridge, and just to make it
> simpler let's say the fridge was otherwise empty.
> Now, Mary tells John that she took one of the bottles
> out of the fridge. She obviously doesn't tell him which
> one, because nobody cares which one she took.
>
> Does John know what is now in the fridge?
> Yes, he knows that there is a bottle of milk in the fridge.
>
> Is it true that for all x, John knows whether x is in the fridge?
> No, he only knows that one of the two bottles that he
> put in the fridge is there, but he doesn't know which
> one (nor does he care).
>
> So, in this case at least, we cannot take the quantifier out
> of the intensional context.

Lovely! However, I think this is only a call for a refinement of
the proposal, not a rejection of it. Clearly John also doesn't
care whether or not the fridge also contains the odd microbe, or
2 micrograms of potassium, or whatever. The solution must reflect
the idea that, out of a set of cognitively-relevant possibilities,
John knows which is in the fridge.
Provisionally:

  For every x such that x is a cognitively-relevant candidate,
   John knows whether x is in the fridge

Next we need to capture the fact that two different bottles of
milk don't count as different candidates if either is the only
bottle of milk in the fridge:

  ... a cognitively-relevant candidate, namely (i) a mass consisting
  of one bottle of milk such that all bottles of milk in the fridge
  belong to this mass, (ii) a mass consisting of two bottles of milk
  such that all bottles of milk in the fridge belong to this mass,
  (iii) ...   (mmmmmmmcccccc) a mass consisting of 453 eggs ...

My slightly but not very tentative conclusion, then, is that the
solution to the problem you raise is an instance of the general
phenomenon whereby most universal quantifications need some (implicit
or explicit) restriction to relevant candidates.

--And.

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#2114
12:52 PM Sun 19 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: More about  questions and the like (was:What I
 From:  Jorge Llambias

From: "Jorge Llambias" jjllambia-@hotmail.com

la and cusku di'e

>   ... a cognitively-relevant candidate, namely (i) a mass consisting
>   of one bottle of milk such that all bottles of milk in the fridge
>   belong to this mass, (ii) a mass consisting of two bottles of milk
>   such that all bottles of milk in the fridge belong to this mass,
>   (iii) ...   (mmmmmmmcccccc) a mass consisting of 453 eggs ...
>
>My slightly but not very tentative conclusion, then, is that the
>solution to the problem you raise is an instance of the general
>phenomenon whereby most universal quantifications need some (implicit
>or explicit) restriction to relevant candidates.

I agree there is always a restriction to relevant candidates,
but I don't think that helps us here. The facts of the situation
are:

(1)  la djan djuno le du'u da poi ladru bopti zo'u
     da nenri le lekmi'i
     John knows that for some x which is a bottle of milk,
     x is in the fridge.

(2)  la djan djuno le du'u da poi ladru bopti zo'u
     da na nenri le lekmi'i
     John knows that for some x which is a bottle of milk,
     x is not in the fridge.

We cannot conclude from (1) that:

(3)  da poi ladru botpi zo'u la djan djuno le du'u
     da nenri le lekmi'i
     For some x which is a bottle of milk, John knows that
     x is in the fridge.

no matter how much we restrict x. You cannot find the referent
for which John knows that fact because there is no bottle of
milk for which John knows _it_ is in the fridge. Your restriction
to cognitively-relevant candidates would seem to require
quantification over references like "a bottle of milk" rather
than over the relevant referents of "a bottle of milk".
In other words, from the choices "a bottle of milk", "two bottles
of milk", ..., "453 eggs", etc, John can tell us which is
the answer to "What is in the fridge?", but those answers
are not themselves in the fridge. Are you quantifying over
the answers or over objects that could be in the fridge?

co'o mi'e xorxes

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#2115
9:25 PM Sun 19 Dec 99
 Subject:  Learning  Artificial Languages
 From:  Bob LeChevalier-Logical Langu

From: Bob LeChevalier-Logical Language Group lojba-@lojban.org

Don Harlow posted the following on the Auxlang List, and I think it is
something worth sharing with Lojbanists:

 >It will occasionally be argued that a constructed language is artificial,
 >and therefore inappropriate for actual use by natural, living human beings.
 >Let's consider the context in which this argument is made. Such a criticism
 >is usually
 >
 >     registered on artificial paper
 >     using an artificial typewriter --
 >     after the critic has sleepily climbed out of his artificial bed,
 >     showered with water pumped artificially uphill,
 >     brushed his -- often artificial -- teeth
 >     with an artificial toothbrush
 >     dipped in artificial toothpaste,
 >     and put on his artificially produced
 >     artificial fiber clothing.
 >     He will then have eaten a breakfast created artificially
 >     (and containing lots of artificial chemicals!)
 >     and driven to his artificial office,
 >     where he will do artificial work,
 >     in an artificial vehicle
 >     along an artificial roadway,
 >     while (hopefully) obeying many artificial laws.
 >
 >How at this point he can complain about the "artificiality" of any
 >constructed language bemuses -- and amuses -- me.
 >
 >(From chap. 2 of _The Esperanto Book_.)
 >
 >
 >-- Don HARLOW

----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.

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#2116
11:39 AM Mon 20 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re &  on ?
 From:  pycy-

From: pycy-@aol.com

I pretty much agree with & on the details of the intensional context in which
"Pegasus was the winged horse captured by Bellerophon"  is embedded.  My
point is only that we do not need all the details usually, but we do
sometimes need a reminder that it IS in an intensional context, that
substitutivity and quantification do not work in normal ways.  Hooha and, in
this case, ku'a were meant to handle the minimal needs, between the
contextual and the fully explicit.

As for the sense of names, I have to admit that that shot is used as a quick
stopper, which usually works but did not this time.  In fact, names do have
senses, even in Frege (though he keeps very quiet about it), since reference
in intensional context is to senses rather than usual references.  Just what
the senses are is tricky but appear at first glance to be just "is named
...," since that accounts for the general failure of substitution.  It won't
quite work, however, since the sense is what picks out an individual in a
possible world and many possible worlds have that individual with a different
name (and gender and species and...).  Of course, it could be argued that the
sense of the name was different from the individual concept of the referent
of that name and thus the above problem did not arise.  Semantics is not
always decisive, even after a century and a quarter on these issues.

That still does not mean that names are predicates, since that would still
give the referent of a name as a class rather than an individual (Quinean
magic being discounted here, as usual).  The arguments that names behave like
predicates in English seem to rely heavily on constructions with "the," a
notoriously polysemic -- and polytactic -- word (witness the complexities of
Lojban's attempts to capture, which still leave a residue of cases), and on
cases of the English pattern of using nouns in modifier positions
(adjectival) -- though most proper names seem to require some modification to
work smoothly here.  And, of course, English evidence is not decisive in
questions of logic.

"For x=Paul," is a perfectly good quantifier in a Montagovian sense.  It is a
restricted quantifier, of course, and Lojban has resisted that notion pretty
strongly -- at least the existential commitment part.  In any case, it
amounts merely to setting a value for a term that inherently can take on a
variety of values.  I suppose that it is equivalent to Ex (x = Paul &...x...)
but is more compact.  It is not Ax(if x = Paul, then ...x...) because it does
insist that Paul exists (the restricted quantifier again).
Which brings us back to the reading of names as "For all x, if x is-Paul,
then ..x..)" and the problem of deriving "for some x,..x..) from such
sentences.  As noted, ifwe use this to deal with "Pegasus was a winged horse"
 to prevent the inference to "There was a winged horse," then we cannot get
an existential generalizations from names at all.  If, as & insists, there is
a way to do it with "John F. Kennedy" and "argon" (a slightly iffy case),
then surely the same trick will work with "Pegasus" UNLESS the "Pegasus"
sentence is marked as in an intensional context and the others are not.  That
was the only point of the example.  But note, & still owes us an explanation
of how to get from "for all x, if x = [name] then ..x.." to "for some
x...x.." I suspect that the trick here is just that extensional names all
have referents and so "for some x, x = [name]" is an axiom to be used in the
(enthymemic) inference.  But then, why not just take names as terms that can
be generalized on (and universally instantiated to  -- I'm not so sure how to
fill out &'s enthymemic version of this one) from the start -- if we are
careful about context.  (Or we might just take all these Ax=> locutions as
historically misidentified restricted quantifiers - many of them are -- and
work with the original quantifier rules, in Aristotle, with some help from
Chrysippus.)

The discussion with xorxes reminds us yet again that we can't do everything
with quantifiers and connectives, that there are pragmatic considerations
that remain even when we max out on precision.  To be sure, it would be nice
to be able to mark these as well, but we only have a finite set of words to
work with.
pc

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#2117
8:22 AM Tue 21 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: Re  & on ?
 From:  pycy-

From: pycy-@aol.com

My turn not to understand.
The question is, why is it better to use the inference
"for all x, if x = Paul, then ..x..; for some x, x = Paul; therefore, for
some x, ..x.." rather than "..Paul.., therefore, for some x, ..x.."?  The
answer seems to be that the former, but not the latter, tells us that Paul
exists.  The point of xu'a was precisely to mark those contexts in which
non-referential names were used in true sentences, so, the assumption goes,
in the absence of xu'a, "Paul" would be denoting name (Paul would exist)  and
no problem would ensue in generalization.

As for the argument that "Paul" has an intension, it seems at best to make
the case that "= Paul," an admitted predicate, has an intension.  But even
that is not clear, since all that is required directly is that "= Paul" have
a non-empty extension.  Depending upon one's view of intensions, this may or
may not require one ("= Paul" might be defined only ostensively, for one
contrary example).

The point about restricted quantifiers is just that ASP entail ISP in
Aristotelian logic, and A(B&C)P entails (in a couple of steps) IBP.  So,
"Every thing x which is Paul is ..x.." entails "Some thing x is ..x.."  The
latter moves require some help from propositional logic, for which he have to
finally thank the Stoic, Chrysippus.

The final point is just that some pairs of utterance have the same logical
form but very different information content because of pragmatic factors.  We
can manage to fake up a bit of logical form to cover some of those pragmatic
factors, but the process will never end  -- there will always be a residuum
that goes unmarked until the next round of fakery.  "All" seems to generate
this sort of problem more often than many related words (well, "the" is a
contender) and, in this case, it calls for a fine grained discrimination that
the situation does not.  There seems no logical way to satisfy both demands
except to note that pragmatically, the answer "a bottle of milk" is a
satisfactory answer, even when it is not possible to say WHICH bottle it is
by some system of identifying bottles of milk (easier than atoms, harder than
puppies to identify).  We could fadge up a logic to do it, but it would be
hideously complex, of limited usefulness, and would just raise a whole new
set of even more gruesome problems.  Best to just stop at a reasonable place
with logic and get by on conventions (more or less -- usually less --
explicit) from there on.
pc

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#2118
11:54 AM Tue 21 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re:  planets
 From:  John Cowan

From: John Cowan jcowa-@reutershealth.com

On the Conlang List, Ed Heil wrote:

> When I was a kid and into astronomy more than I am now, it was never
> a widely held theory that the moon was the result of a collision with
> another planet ripping a chunk out of the earth.

That is the standard theory now, except that *both* the Earth and the
Moon are the result of that collision.

> (ObConlang: Does your conlang have a verb which specifically
> describes massive asteroid impacts that rip a chunk off a planet and
> make it into a moon?

Sure: in Lojban, that would be lurborzbaplinyborpopkemcmaplinyjanli.
(c = /S/, j = /Z/, y = /@/, all else IPA; penultimate stress).

That analyzes to "(moon make) (planet break) ((small planet) collide)".

> Why or why not?)

Why? A consequence of Lojban's fully productive compounding rules.

--

Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis vom dies! || John Cowan jcowa-@reutershealth.com
Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau,  || http://www.reutershealth.com
Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau,           || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Und trank die Milch vom Paradies.            -- Coleridge (tr. Politzer)

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#2119
10:10 AM Wed 22 Dec 99
 Subject:  prosa  gutci lipamu
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com


ze'e lepu'u se burcu keikuku mi ca'o ciskycusku lebi'u draci neme'e
lu pelxu rairno'i li'u ku'o zi'enoi draci le mintu be lebi'unai pixra be
leke'a .i ko'agoi le draci cu bilga co mapti le misno ve skicu pefi'e
la rabyrt. tceimbyrz. i ko'a ba'o ciroi se ciskycusku le vrici .i caku
mi ko'a vomoi ciskycusku mu'i lenu nole pu ko'a cu mapti le ve
skicu leka vlipa ja pemcybau .i mi na birti ledu'u lemi draci ba
banzu .i po'o birti ledu'u mi carmi troci kei .e ledu'u lenu troci cu
carmi nandu

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#2120
12:07 AM Thu 23 Dec 99
 Subject:  prosa  gutci lipaxa
 From:  michael helsem
From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

mi pensi co preti ledu'u xukau banzu lenu vo'a kurji je sanji
pilno je xaksu dapoi dacti pele terdi

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#2121
5:05 AM Thu 23 Dec 99
 Subject:  Could be fun: IWPT  2000 Call for Participation
 From:  Robin Turner

From: Robin Turner robi-@bilkent.edu.tr



-------- Original Message --------
Subject: IWPT 2000 Call for Participation
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 1999 07:45:42 -0800 ( PST)
From: Harry Bunt harry.bun-@kub.nl
Reply-To: Harry Bunt harry.bun-@kub.nl
To: coglin-@ucsd.edu



            C a l l   f o r   P a r t i c i p a t i o n


                            IWPT 2000

        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
        6th International Workshop on Parsing Technologies
        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

                http://ecate.itc.it:1025/iwpt2000.html


                     Sponsored by ACL/SIGPARSE

                        23-25 February, 2000
                          Trento, Italy
                              ~~~~


*********************************************************************
  *                       INVITED
SPEAKERS                            *

*
*
  *  Eric Brill (Microsoft Research - NLP
group)                      *
  *              Automatic Grammar Induction: Combining,
Reducing     *
  *              and Doing
Nothing                                    *

*
*
  *  Martin Kay (Xerox
PARC)                                          *
  *              Guides and Oracles for Linear-Time
Parsing           *

*
*
  *  Giorgio Satta (University of
Padua)                              *
  *                 Parsing Techniques for Lexicalized
Context-Free   *
  *                 Grammar
Models                                    *

*********************************************************************


IWPT 2000 continues the tradition of biennial workshops on
parsing
technology organised by SIGPARSE, the Special Interest Group on
Parsing of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL).
This
workshop series was initiated by Masaru Tomita in 1989.  The
first
workshop, in Pittsburgh and Hidden Valley, was followed by
workshops
in Cancun (Mexico) in 1991; Tilburg (Netherlands) and Durbuy
(Belgium)
in 1993; Prague and Karlovy Vary (Czech Republic) in 1995; and
Boston/Cambridge (Massachusetts) in 1997.



                       REGISTRATION INFORMATION
                             *********

Conference fees
---------------

Regular: 200 EURO (before 31 Jan 2000)
         300 EURO (after 31 Jan 2000)
Student:  70 EURO (before 31 Jan 2000)
         120 EURO (after 31 Jan 2000)

The conference fee includes a copy of the proceedings, lunch
tickets
and coffee breaks.

To register, use the registration form available on the IWPT 2000
web
pages at the URL
http://ecate.itc.it:1025/iwpt2000/registration.html
and send it to the IWPT 2000 secretariat (whose address is on the
web
page above) by fax or regular mail.


FURTHER INFORMATION

Further details about the workshop (accommodation, tourist
information, etc) can be found on the web pages of IWPT 2000 at
the URL
http://ecate.itc.it:1025/iwpt2000.html.

The list of accepted papers is available at the URL
http://ecate.itc.it:1025/iwpt2000/accepted.html.


For questions about the workshop programme email
iwpt200-@cogs.susx.ac.uk;
for questions about the local arrangements email iwpt200-@itc.it.

------------------------------------------------------
 Harry C. Bunt
 Professor of Linguistics and Computer Science
 Dean, Faculty of Arts
 Tilburg University
 P.O. Box 90153
 5000 LE Tilburg, the Netherlands
 Phone: +31 - 13 466.3060 (secretary Anne Andriaensen)
                     2568 (Dean's office)
                     2653 (office, room B 310)
 Fax: +31 - 13 466.3110
 harry.bun-@kub.nl
 WWW: http://cwis.kub.nl/~fdl/general/people/bunt/index.stm
-----------------------------------------------------------

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#2122
1:39 PM Thu 23 Dec 99
 Subject:  prosa gutci lipaxa
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

mi pensi co preti ledu'u xukau banzu lenu vo'a kurji je sanji
pilno je xaksu dapoi dacti pele terdi

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#2123
4:17 AM Fri 24 Dec 99
 Subject:  A silly joke for  Christams
 From:  Robin Turner

From: Robin Turner robi-@bilkent.edu.tr

Q: How many Lojbanists does it take to change a broken lightbulb?

A: Two: one to decide what kind of bulb would emit broken light,
and one to decide what it should be changed into.

co'o mi'e robin.

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#2124
5:00 AM Fri 24 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: a silly joke...
 From:  A. R. Goldman







"From: Robin Turner

Q: How many Lojbanists does it take to change a broken
lightbulb?

A: Two: one to decide what kind of bulb would emit broken
light,
and one to decide what it should be changed into.

co'o mi'e robin."
#2125
5:05 AM Fri 24 Dec 99
 Subject:  re: a silly joke...]
 From:  A. R. Goldman




I should have looked at the beginer's course.... ".i'e .i'e" seems pretty
close to "Vah! Vah!"
"A. R. Goldman" wrote:



"From: Robin Turner

Q: How many Lojbanists does it take to change a broken
lightbulb?

A: Two: one to decide what kind of bulb would emit broken
light,
and one to decide what it should be changed into.

co'o mi'e robin."
#2126
5:11 AM Fri 24 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: re: a silly  joke...
 From:  Robin Turner
From: Robin Turner robi-@bilkent.edu.tr

"A. R. Goldman" wrote:
>
> > "From: Robin Turner
> >
> > Q: How many Lojbanists does it take to change a broken
> > lightbulb?
> >
> > A: Two: one to decide what kind of bulb would emit broken
> > light,
> > and one to decide what it should be changed into.
> >
> > co'o mi'e robin."
> >
> In Urdu when one experiences humor, or a moment of great
> aesthetic pleasure, one responds with "Vah! Vah!" I don't know
> the Lojban equivalent, but, definitely: Vah! Vah!
> ARG

{.u'icai} , probably!  Interestingly, "Vah, vah" in Turkish is
used on hearing very bad news - something like {.uucai}

co'o mi'e robin.

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#2127
7:38 AM Fri 24 Dec 99
 Subject:  cesycitsi  xajmi
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

paunai xo lobypli cu banzu le broda cei mu'e basygau lepoi se
xaksu ku'o gusni balji

.i danfu ko'agoi le xecto di'u .i pako'a nu'o to'e drani cusku
le broda .i fo da'ako'a nu'o pinka le broda bau la gliban.

.i zo'o.iu zo'o.iu zo'o.iu

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#2128
7:31 PM Sun 26 Dec 99
 Subject:  On  international applications of Lojban
 From:  Bob LeChevalier-Logical Langu

From: Bob LeChevalier-Logical Language Group lojba-@lojban.org

The following was posted to Auxlang mailing list by Paul Bartlett.  I have
been trying for months to figure a way to explain why I support the
European Patent usage of Lojban, but have not been willing to commit
significant resources to selling the idea.  Besides having a dictionary to
do, that is ...

This sums up one of my major concerns, as to why Lojban as a community may
not be quite ready for adoption, even if we can show a good and useful
translation of a patent.  Maybe people can be looking at what we need to do
in order to be able to promote the use of Lojban other than as a toy or as
a medium of personal expression (both of these are worthwhile in
themselves, but surely are not all that is possible for the language).

 >Date:    Fri, 24 Dec 1999 12:36:50 -0500
 >From:    Paul O Bartlett bartlet-@smart.net
 >Subject: Re: Artificiality, was (Difficulty of Learning Languages)
 >
 >On Fri, 24 Dec 1999, Kjell Rehnstrm wrote (very tiny excerpt):
 >
 >>                         Where are the teachers?
 >
 >    This brings up a significant problem for the spread and use of
 >constructed auxiliary languages.  There seem to be two approaches
 >to the matter, although these two approaches are not necessarily
 >incompatible.
 >
 >    There are those who take a sort of bottom-up approach.  People
 >should learn IAL X as individuals and club together (if they choose),
 >informally or somewhat formally in associations.  Thus, it is believed,
 >an IAL will spread as time goes by.
 >
 >    Others favor a sort of top-down approach.  They adovcate adoption
 >of IAL X by some sort of international or quasi-international body.
 >One that most frequently comes to mind is the European Union, with its
 >staggering costs for translation and interpreting services.  There
 >could, of course, be other bodies which might conceivably adopt a
 >conIAL, such as some agency of the United Nations.
 >
 >    Although I think that the top-down approach would be a marvelous
 >thing, it does have a problem: as Kjell said, "Where are the teachers?"
 >If some body were to adopt a conIAL, I presume that they would want to
 >be able to get up to speed with it relatively quickly and would want
 >accuracy in it use.  This implies the need for teachers and teaching
 >materials.  Also, I think it likely that before such an auxlang would
 >be adopted, the potential adoptors would want assurance that the
 >proposed interlanguage would be up to the job.
 >
 >    Where are the teachers?  Well, Esperanto could probably supply many
 >of them for instruction in many countries, and I would assess that it
 >is adequate for the task (although the supersigned letter definitely
 >work to its disfavor).  Latin, strictly speaking, of course, is not a
 >constructed IAL, but it has been proposed as an international language
 >again, once adequate terminology has been added for modern things and
 >concepts.  There might be enough teachers to do the job, and Latin has
 >a proven track record.  However, one difficulty with Latin is that I do
 >not myself foresee everyday diplomats using it conversationally (where
 >a lot of real work gets done) and in formal debates and discussions.
 >Then again, one idea is that an auxlang not be used so much in debates
 >as an intermediary or so-called pivot language for documents and
 >translations.
 >
 >    Are any others of today's proposed (con)IALs up to the job in the
 >sense of having enough teachers and being adequate to the task?  To be
 >honest, I am skeptical.  For instance, I like IALA Interlingua, but I
 >don't know if there are enough teachers and adequate didactic materials
 >in enough languages to be up to the job.  I really doubt that at this
 >time any other conIAL has much of a realistic chance for consideration
 >for top-down adoption, whatever its respective merits might be.  Ido I
 >also like, and Occidental is interesting, but I honestly doubt that
 >either of them has much chance at all for a top-down adoption.  Other
 >languages?  I don't think so.
 >
 >    Thus, I think that the only conIAL with much likelihood for formal
 >or quasi-formal adoption is Esperanto, with Interlingua a distant
 >second.  And one of the major hurdles, for Esperanto, Interlingua, or
 >XYZ, is that so many people simply do not take seriously at all the
 >very idea of a constructed auxiliary.
 >
 >    Of course, there is nothing at all wrong with bottom-up, and
 >nothing says that an auxlang has to be adopted formally for it still to
 >be useful.  But, as Mike Farris has pointed out, we have yet to see any
 >conIAL, including Esperanto, used much for business contracts, other
 >commercial dealings, scientific papers, or whatever (although
 >Interlingua was once used partially for scientific abstracts).  Thus,
 >all of them remain largely in the realm of hobby.  Whether the
 >bottom-up approach will be adequate in the long run reamins to be seen.
 >
 >--
 >Paul                                  bartlet-@smart.net
 >..........................................................
 >Paul O. Bartlett, P.O. Box 857, Vienna, VA 22183-0857, USA
 >Keyserver (0xF383C8F9) or WWW for PGP public key
 >Home Page:  http://www.smart.net/~bartlett

----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.

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#2129
7:31 PM Sun 26 Dec 99
 Subject:  The most  unusual Lojban word?
 From:  Bob LeChevalier-Logical Langu

From: Bob LeChevalier-Logical Language Group lojba-@lojban.org

I have discovered an unusual novelty - a Lojban lujvo that is spelled
identically to an English word while being pronounced quite differently,
but which seems to mean the same thing in English and Lojban.  The word:
"stifle" (defining metaphor "cease-flow").

lojbab
----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.

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#2130
10:03 PM Sun 26 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: a silly joke
 From:  J_Raven

From: "J_Raven" j_rave-@hotmail.com

Oh, boy.  I don't write much in here.   but gotta give it up for the
originator of that joke.   I liked that one.

j_rave-@hotmail.com

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#2131
5:13 AM Mon 27 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: On  international applications of Lojban
 From:  Robin Turner
From: Robin Turner robi-@bilkent.edu.tr

Bob LeChevalier-Logical Language Group wrote:
>
> From: Bob LeChevalier-Logical Language Group lojba-@lojban.org
>
> The following was posted to Auxlang mailing list by Paul Bartlett.  I have
> been trying for months to figure a way to explain why I support the
> European Patent usage of Lojban, but have not been willing to commit
> significant resources to selling the idea.  Besides having a dictionary to
> do, that is ...
>
> This sums up one of my major concerns, as to why Lojban as a community may
> not be quite ready for adoption, even if we can show a good and useful
> translation of a patent.  Maybe people can be looking at what we need to do
> in order to be able to promote the use of Lojban other than as a toy or as
> a medium of personal expression (both of these are worthwhile in
> themselves, but surely are not all that is possible for the language).
>
[original post cut]

Here's my two-pennorth (or two cents)

1.  The first priority is to produce a user-friendly basic Lojban
course on the web and later in book form.  Oh, er, I'm supposed
to be doing that, aren't I? Oops.

2.  Ditto dictionary.

3.  Find a small number of areas where Lojban has a potential
area of use / support e.g. patent law, computer science / AI,
philosophy etc.  Form working groups to promote the language in
thoise areas, primiarily by coining the necessary vocabulary.
Produce interim specialist dictionaries for these language areas.

4.  If and when Lojban starts to gain acceptance in one of these
areas, put as much resources as we can into that area.  Write,
translate, teach.  Go for grants, sponsorships etc.  Get
endorsements from major figures in the field. Obviously the
methods we use will depend on the area we're in; with patent law
the emphasis would be on precision and proving that Lojban is
more suitable for patents than natlangs, while if we were using
Lojban within, say, the Linux / Free Software community, the geek
factor would be more important (as I pointed out on Auxlang, I
mentioned Lojban to one of the Comp.Sci. people here and his
response was "You've got unambiguous syntax?  Wow, you guys must
have really strict scope-marking!").

Having said all this, I'm not in favour of going overboard on the
promotion side.  Over the top promotion can be counter-productive
(as readers of the Auxlang list will know!), and once the
language is up to scratch people will naturally "promote" it in
the areas they are interested in.

co'o mi'e robin.

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#2132
8:51 AM Mon 27 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: "what i have  for dinner"
 From:  la kinin
From: "la kinin" mtpeppe-@prodigy.net

li'osa'a But more importantly, "I wonder who..." can't be "for all x, I
wonder whether x..." since there are a lot of x's that I do not know or
believe about, and many that I actively believe do not exist. li'osa'a

ienai na'igo'i (as close as I could get to Au contraire!)

Pe'i, in order to wonder who came, you ba'e must wonder if Julius Csar
came, or the number 4 zo'o, if only on a subconscious level (this level may
be so deeply buried that it is part of diciding about whom to wonder, but
it's still there).

Ja'o, I think a good paraphrase of mi kucli ledu'u makau klama is roda
zo'u mi kucli lejei da klama (even though it doesn't capture every nuance
of the inarguably useful kau). Note my use of jei, the considerably less
controversial truth-value abstactor, to translate the English whether.

co'omi'e la kinin. noi pilno lei lojbo valsi ne'i lo'e glico jufra ku noda

.i sei ganai da'i e'o do te pinka di'u. a dei gi mi se pluka

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#2133
8:04 AM Wed 29 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: On  international applications of Lojban
 From:  And Rosta
From: "And Rosta" a.rost-@pmail.net

My response to the Top-Down idea of IAL or Lojban adoption
is to wonder why it should be a good thing for the adopting
body? Take the European patent organization: it would be
a trivial task to develop a language that shares Lojban's
virtues of nonambiguity and other areas of suitability to
the formulation of patents but is much simpler and easier
to learn; logicians have been using such languages for
decades. Likewise for an IAL; if the EU did decide it
would be economically advantageous (tho I think it wouldn't),
for what reason (other than idiocy) would it opt for the
halfarsed candidate IALs currently on the market?

In my view, the Bottom-Up approach is the only viable one
for Lojban and currently extant IALs. The only hope for
Lojban to succeed Top-Downly is that some organization is
intelligent enough to see the merits of adopting a logical
language, but stupid enough to choose Lojban to do the job.

(This isn't an attack on Lojban. Lojban is more complex
than it needs to be for limited, formal, written applications
because it needs also to be usable for the full range of
linguistic functions. (I still think it's unnecessarily
complex grammatically even given that, but that's not my
point.))

--And.

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#2134
9:53 AM Wed 29 Dec 99
 Subject:  prosa  gutci lipaze
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

mi co'apu'u skami joi mrilu te vecnu dapoi
bevyka'erkempaltytamteryrejyzgiborpra to to'e frili fa lenu
facki da toi .i ze'u so'o nanca kuku mi jbera judytirna
levo'a paltytai tervei noi li panono jibni klani ke'a .i baziku
mi ka'e ponse minji judytirna ra

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#2135
2:10 PM Wed 29 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: "what i have for  dinner"
 From:  And Rosta

From: "And Rosta" a.rost-@pmail.net

> From: "la kinin" mtpeppe-@prodigy.net
>
> li'osa'a But more importantly, "I wonder who..." can't be "for all x, I
> wonder whether x..." since there are a lot of x's that I do not know or
> believe about, and many that I actively believe do not exist. li'osa'a
>
> ienai na'igo'i (as close as I could get to Au contraire!)
>
> Pe'i, in order to wonder who came, you ba'e must wonder if Julius Csar
> came, or the number 4 zo'o, if only on a subconscious level (this
> level may
> be so deeply buried that it is part of diciding about whom to wonder, but
> it's still there).
>
> Ja'o, I think a good paraphrase of mi kucli ledu'u makau klama is roda
> zo'u mi kucli lejei da klama (even though it doesn't capture every nuance
> of the inarguably useful kau). Note my use of jei, the
> considerably less controversial truth-value abstactor, to translate the
> English whether.

People used to use {jei} for "whether", until it was realized that if
le jei da klama is TRUE, then you are claiming that ro da zo'u mi kucli
TRUE -- which is not what you want to claim at all. Simplifying somewhat,
I suggested a couple of years ago something loosely along the lines of

  ro da ro de poi jei da klama zo'u mi djica le nu mi djuno le du'u
     de jei da klama

I initiated the thread last month because this 'solution' didn't seem to
generalize to all cases where English subordinate interrogatives or
Lojban {kau} could be used. And I *still* haven't found the requisite
mental athleticism to get to grips with the solutions proposed by
others yet!

--And.

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#2136
2:12 AM Thu 30 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: On  international applications of Lojban
 From:  Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org

At 04:09 PM 12/29/99 +0000, And Rosta wrote:
>My response to the Top-Down idea of IAL or Lojban adoption
>is to wonder why it should be a good thing for the adopting
>body? Take the European patent organization: it would be
>a trivial task to develop a language that shares Lojban's
>virtues of nonambiguity and other areas of suitability to
>the formulation of patents but is much simpler and easier
>to learn;

Really?  If it were so easy, why haven't they done so?  Personally, I don't
think you can get much simpler than Lojban and still do the job. The
primary extraneous feature of Lojban not applicable to patents is the
attitudinal/evidential system.  Even audible unambiguity has some value.

>  logicians have been using such languages for decades.

1) What language have logicians used that could be used for writing a
patent description?  Key here is "description", and description takes
meaningful content words.  Patents include both things and processes, and
both have to be describable, hence tanru and description sumti both
requiring content words and both capable of being disambiguated
semantically to an arbitrary degree of specificity as well as grammatically.

2. The language of logic that most people have seen is the predicate
calculus.  Being a reasonably bright sort of guy who struggled to barely
pass a self-paced college level course in the stuff, I daresay that many
would call the predicate calculus easy to learn.

Computer languages that include logic come closer to the mark, but they
also lack content words.

>  Likewise for an IAL; if the EU did decide it
>would be economically advantageous (tho I think it wouldn't),
>for what reason (other than idiocy) would it opt for the
>halfarsed candidate IALs currently on the market?

If it were easy to develop a better one, I am sure that people would have
done so already.  It isn't merely money that is lacking (though money would
be nice) - Interlingua had money backing it, and of course DLTs machine
translation internal interlanguage based on Esperanto had money backing
it.  A language sufficient to do the job will have to be sufficiently
complex, and G-d knows that balancing complexity vs. needed features is far
from easy.

Then there is the key advantage of an existing language in that there are
people who already know it and who therefore can serve as teachers, already
written teaching materials that people can learn the language from without
teachers if necessary.  It took 3 years of teaching material development to
get Lojban to the point that Nick Nicholas could teach himself the language
from the materials and be able to write cogent Lojban without a lot of
coaching, and it took him a few more years of work before he felt himself
skilled at the language.  Only with the advent of the Book have we had
significant numbers able to teach themselves Lojban, and a goodly number
have said that even that is not sufficient for them.  Going from raw
language concept to the Book is dozens of person-years of effort.  Going
from there to even the current level of Lojban prowess is many more
person-years of effort on the part of self-teachers.  And we don't yet have
enough to teach the European patent community (hence by initiation of this
thread), much less the rest of Europe.  There is a likelihood that
Esperanto could come up with the needed teachers reasonably quickly,
especially given that for many it would their first chance to make money
using the language (which can be a strong motivating force for many who
have half-learned Esperanto, probably including a goodly portion of this list).

>In my view, the Bottom-Up approach is the only viable one
>for Lojban and currently extant IALs.

But is the bottom-up approach viable at all?  I think that it is a
necessary step - necessary to build the infrastructure of teachers and
teaching materials and lexicon, but the key problme of bottom-up is
achieving any sort of critical mass.  Lojban has probably achieved critical
mass enough to survive it inventors (which makes it one of the most select
of conlangs), but not necessarily enough to gain a respectable "market
share" among the languages of the world.  (I think Lojban has the advantage
that it needs a lot smaller number than other conlangs to achieve critical
mass, because Lojban unlike most conlangs DOES have the sort of specialty
application like patent law and computer-communications that is
economically viable with only a small fraction of the world learning
it.  And economic viability is the key to "top down" - a top down approach
will work when someone with power sees a way to make money using the language.

>  The only hope for
>Lojban to succeed Top-Downly is that some organization is
>intelligent enough to see the merits of adopting a logical
>language, but stupid enough to choose Lojban to do the job.

Gee, thanks. %^)

>(This isn't an attack on Lojban. Lojban is more complex
>than it needs to be for limited, formal, written applications
>because it needs also to be usable for the full range of
>linguistic functions.

What linguistic functions other than attitudinals are not needed for patent
work?  More importantly, how much simpler could a language optimally
designed for a limited purpose be than a Lojban subset that simply omits
those features not needed.  After all, a large portion of the Loglan/Lojban
concept is optionality of features.

>  (I still think it's unnecessarily complex grammatically even given that,
> but that's not my point.))

And of course you yourself have tried to come up with an alternative, and
apparently found it not all that easy.  Jim Carter tried for something
simpler and more algorithmic, and likewise made several false starts before
coming up with something that few even try to learn.

Again, if it were so easy to do much better than Lojban, why hasn't anyone
even come close?

lojbab
----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.

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#2137
1:16 PM Thu 30 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: On international  applications of Lojban
 From:  And Rosta
From: "And Rosta" a.rost-@pmail.net

> From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org
>
> At 04:09 PM 12/29/99 +0000, And Rosta wrote:
> >My response to the Top-Down idea of IAL or Lojban adoption
> >is to wonder why it should be a good thing for the adopting
> >body? Take the European patent organization: it would be
> >a trivial task to develop a language that shares Lojban's
> >virtues of nonambiguity and other areas of suitability to
> >the formulation of patents but is much simpler and easier
> >to learn;
>
> Really?  If it were so easy, why haven't they done so?

Either because they haven't perceived the need or because some
cost/benefit analysis doesn't justify it.

> Personally, I don't think you can get much simpler than
> Lojban and still do the job. The primary extraneous feature
> of Lojban not applicable to patents is the attitudinal/evidential
> system.  Even audible unambiguity has some value.

There is nothing relevant that Lojban can do that standard
predicate logic notation can't. In a Polish/Reverse Polish predicate
logic notation you need nothing but predicates, variables,
one or two quantifiers and two or three connectives. In other
words, setting aside how variables are handled, you could have
a language with only 3 cmavo! I'll admit that that number might
be expanded a bit, e.g. to include numbers, but even an expanded
cmavo inventory would be only a tiny proportion of Lojban's.
Likewise, the entire syntax could be formulated in a single
sentence.

> >  logicians have been using such languages for decades.
>
> 1) What language have logicians used that could be used for writing a
> patent description?  Key here is "description", and description takes
> meaningful content words.  Patents include both things and processes, and
> both have to be describable, hence tanru and description sumti both
> requiring content words and both capable of being disambiguated
> semantically to an arbitrary degree of specificity as well as
> grammatically.

Of course the predicate words' senses have to be defined. But in Lojban the
predicate words' senses are not defined -- this task has been left to
'usage'
to achieve.

> 2. The language of logic that most people have seen is the predicate
> calculus.  Being a reasonably bright sort of guy who struggled to barely
> pass a self-paced college level course in the stuff, I daresay that many
> would call the predicate calculus easy to learn.

Is that irony? If so, I guess that they problem with predicate calculus is
that there's no fudgeability with it, which nonfudgeability is exactly why
one wants a logical language. Note also that predicate logic is a subset
of Lojban, so if you learn Lojban you learn predicate logic plus a load
of extra stuff.

> Computer languages that include logic come closer to the mark, but they
> also lack content words.
>
> >  Likewise for an IAL; if the EU did decide it
> >would be economically advantageous (tho I think it wouldn't),
> >for what reason (other than idiocy) would it opt for the
> >halfarsed candidate IALs currently on the market?
>
> If it were easy to develop a better one, I am sure that people would have
> done so already.

Why? Most of the people who invent IALs are total lunatics, and most of the
rest are either ignorant or dim.

> It isn't merely money that is lacking (though money would
> be nice) - Interlingua had money backing it, and of course DLTs machine
> translation internal interlanguage based on Esperanto had money backing
> it.  A language sufficient to do the job will have to be sufficiently
> complex, and G-d knows that balancing complexity vs. needed
> features is far from easy.
>
> Then there is the key advantage of an existing language in that there are
> people who already know it and who therefore can serve as
> teachers, already written teaching materials that people can learn the
> language from without teachers if necessary.  It took 3 years of teaching
> material development to get Lojban to the point that Nick Nicholas could
> teach himself the language from the materials and be able to write cogent
> Lojban without a lot of coaching, and it took him a few more years of
> work before he felt himself skilled at the language.  Only with the
> advent of the Book have we had significant numbers able to teach
> themselves Lojban, and a goodly number have said that even that is not
> sufficient for them.  Going from raw language concept to the Book is
> dozens of person-years of effort.  Going from there to even the current
> level of Lojban prowess is many more person-years of effort on the part
> of self-teachers.  And we don't yet have enough to teach the European
> patent community (hence by initiation of this thread), much less the rest
> of Europe.  There is a likelihood that Esperanto could come up with the
> needed teachers reasonably quickly, especially given that for many it
> would their first chance to make money using the language (which can be
> a strong motivating force for many who have half-learned Esperanto,
> probably including a goodly portion of this list).

I'm not sure what point you're making. I agree that there are these
obstacles to the adoption of Lojban. And as I've said, I think Lojban
and Esperanto would be poor choices for a patent language, or for a
European IAL.

> >In my view, the Bottom-Up approach is the only viable one
> >for Lojban and currently extant IALs.
>
> But is the bottom-up approach viable at all?  I think that it is a
> necessary step - necessary to build the infrastructure of teachers and
> teaching materials and lexicon, but the key problme of bottom-up is
> achieving any sort of critical mass.

I've never believed Lojban to be viable in the sense that you mean, and
have no burning desire to assist it to become viable.

> Lojban has probably achieved critical mass enough to survive it
> inventors (which makes it one of the most select of conlangs),

I am certain this is so. There's now the Book, which contains pretty
much all there is to know about the language, and I imagine it will
always attract small numbers of people who find Lojban appealing.

> but not necessarily enough to gain a respectable "market
> share" among the languages of the world.  (I think Lojban has the
> advantage that it needs a lot smaller number than other conlangs to
> achieve critical mass, because Lojban unlike most conlangs DOES have
> the sort of specialty application like patent law and
computer-communications
> that is economically viable with only a small fraction of the world
learning
> it.  And economic viability is the key to "top down" - a top down
> approach will work when someone with power sees a way to make money using
> the language.

I very much doubt that this will happen, though it happening is Lojban's
only real hope for achieving critical mass.

But at any rate, I don't see why you should care so much. I recognize that
you've decided that the validation for all the efforts you've invested in
Lojban is the creation of a living language rather than just a language,
but I don't understand why you should make that the validation, especially
when it's so improbable. And the original idea that a loglan-speaking
community would test sapirwhorf, I've always regarded as a bit of blarney
baloney by JC Brown who really wanted to invent a language but was trying to
(a) gain respectability for an ill-respected activity, (b) differentiate
the product from others, (c) attract adherents.

> >  The only hope for
> >Lojban to succeed Top-Downly is that some organization is
> >intelligent enough to see the merits of adopting a logical
> >language, but stupid enough to choose Lojban to do the job.
>
> Gee, thanks. %^)

What I mean is this. First, the overriding goal of the Lojban project was
always to get a minimally adequate product out into the world. The policy
was "if it's not broken, don't fix it". But if you're an organization that
is so dissatisfied with existing natural languages that you want to
adopt a logical language, you're probably an organization that wants the
language to be as good as is practicable. Secondly, and more importantly,
Lojban was designed as a compromise between many different goals. It is
probable that an organization adopting a logical language would have
different and fewer goals, and that Lojban would be a relatively poor
solution for these goals.

I suppose that once one organization used Lojban, that would then become
a reason in itself for other organizations to use it too. But I really
can't see it being a sensible decision for any organization to adopt it
otherwise. True, it already exists, so would save labour in concocting
an alternative language, but if you're going to invest so much in getting
your organization to use it, a redesign would probably save you cost
in the long run.

I'm not hostile to Lojban. If the United Nations decided to choose a
language to be a global general purpose second language, and if I
had a vote, then if the choice had to be made from an existing language
then I would vote for Lojban. And even if there was the option of
designing a new language I would vote for Lojban to avoid the risk
of the designed language being worse than Lojban. On the other hand,
of course, if the United Nations decided to entrust the task of
designing the language to me, then I would not choose Lojban...;-]

> >(This isn't an attack on Lojban. Lojban is more complex
> >than it needs to be for limited, formal, written applications
> >because it needs also to be usable for the full range of
> >linguistic functions.
>
> What linguistic functions other than attitudinals are not needed
> for patent work?

Lojban is designed to be general purpose, flexible, nonconstraining,
culturally neutral, etc. etc. The only two of its goals necessary
for patent work are logicality and nonambiguity.

> More importantly, how much simpler could a language optimally
> designed for a limited purpose be than a Lojban subset that simply omits
> those features not needed.  After all, a large portion of the
> Loglan/Lojban concept is optionality of features.

If you pared Lojban down to the smallest adequate portion you'd still
be left with unnecessary stuff (e.g. zo'u, terminators) and what remained
would be Lojban only in as much as that unnecessary stuff would remain
and that the vocabulary items would be Lojban. And the vocabulary items
being Lojban would be a positively unnecessary hindrance to efficient
use of the language. It would be much easier for all concerned to use
a posteriori European vocabulary.

> >  (I still think it's unnecessarily complex grammatically even
> given that,
> > but that's not my point.))
>
> And of course you yourself have tried to come up with an alternative, and
> apparently found it not all that easy.

My own language is a general purpose one like Lojban, and has to grapplie
with a similarly disparate set of design goals, and the difficulty is
mainly in the amount of work involved. I could design the basis for
a European patent language in scarcely more than the time it would take to
decide on the phonology.

> Jim Carter tried for something simpler and more algorithmic, and likewise
> made several false starts before coming up with something that few even
try
> to learn.

But Jimc was trying to create an implementation of Loglan, not just create
a minimalist logical language. And I don't think the number of people who
try
to learn it tells you anything significant.

> Again, if it were so easy to do much better than Lojban, why hasn't anyone
> even come close?

First, it is not so easy to do better than Lojban if you have the same goals
as Lojban. It is easier to do better than Lojban only if you have a more
restricted set of goals. Second, if it is possible to do better than Lojban,
with the same set of goals, this is largely because it is possible to learn
from Lojban's 'mistakes', i.e. it is by standing on Lojban's shoulders that
Lojban can be bettered. Third, even if it were easy to improve upon Lojban's
design, there remains the matter of the huge amount of labour necessary to
get any language to the level of completion that Lojban has attained.

Also, in a certain sense, it has been proved that it is easy to do better
than Lojban, because over the years people have often proposed valid
improvements that were not adopted (on the grounds that completion was
a more important goal than improvement).

--And.

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#2138
4:53 PM Thu 30 Dec 99
 Subject:  pinka da  po'u lo nu'o multedykemjbonunpli
 From:  michael helsem
From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

.i'ecu'i bau la gliban. kuku na cumki fa lenu stace casnu le
nu'o nu pilno ja prali kei pe la lojban. i mi stidi ledu'u
ma'a finti je facki le lojbo selsku poi mapti lenu casnu da
keiku'o pulenu troci co bebna xusra leda zazyzasti va'o le
multerdi cuntu

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#2139
5:13 PM Thu 30 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: On international  applications of Lojban
 From:  Brook
From: Brook nellard-@concentric.net





On Thu, 30 Dec 1999, And Rosta wrote:





#2140
11:34 PM Thu 30 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: On international  applications of Lojban
 From:  Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org

At 09:20 PM 12/30/99 +0000, And Rosta wrote:
> > From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org
> > At 04:09 PM 12/29/99 +0000, And Rosta wrote:
> > >My response to the Top-Down idea of IAL or Lojban adoption
> > >is to wonder why it should be a good thing for the adopting
> > >body? Take the European patent organization: it would be
> > >a trivial task to develop a language that shares Lojban's
> > >virtues of nonambiguity and other areas of suitability to
> > >the formulation of patents but is much simpler and easier
> > >to learn;
> >
> > Really?  If it were so easy, why haven't they done so?
>
>Either because they haven't perceived the need or because some
>cost/benefit analysis doesn't justify it.
>
> > Personally, I don't think you can get much simpler than
> > Lojban and still do the job. The primary extraneous feature
> > of Lojban not applicable to patents is the attitudinal/evidential
> > system.  Even audible unambiguity has some value.
>
>There is nothing relevant that Lojban can do that standard
>predicate logic notation can't.

It can be spoken and written (unambiguously), and it is languagy enough
that someone can learn it as a language (I doubt that many can learn
predicate logic as a language).

By this argument, the efforts to develop an interlanguage for machine
translation would need only use predicate calculus.  But instead the
closest that anyone has come to successfully using an interlanguage was the
DLT project that used Esperanto.

>  In a Polish/Reverse Polish predicate
>logic notation you need nothing but predicates, variables,
>one or two quantifiers and two or three connectives. In other
>words, setting aside how variables are handled, you could have
>a language with only 3 cmavo! I'll admit that that number might
>be expanded a bit, e.g. to include numbers, but even an expanded
>cmavo inventory would be only a tiny proportion of Lojban's.
>Likewise, the entire syntax could be formulated in a single
>sentence.

But could human beings use it to describe a patent?

And what happens when you need to translate an indirect question?  After
all, haven't you just found that it is a fairly intractible problem for
predicate logic?

> > >  logicians have been using such languages for decades.
> >
> > 1) What language have logicians used that could be used for writing a
> > patent description?  Key here is "description", and description takes
> > meaningful content words.  Patents include both things and processes, and
> > both have to be describable, hence tanru and description sumti both
> > requiring content words and both capable of being disambiguated
> > semantically to an arbitrary degree of specificity as well as
> > grammatically.
>
>Of course the predicate words' senses have to be defined. But in Lojban the
>predicate words' senses are not defined -- this task has been left to
>'usage' to achieve.

And patent translation would be a large amount of usage.

> > 2. The language of logic that most people have seen is the predicate
> > calculus.  Being a reasonably bright sort of guy who struggled to barely
> > pass a self-paced college level course in the stuff, I daresay that many
> > would call the predicate calculus easy to learn.
>
>Is that irony?

No, a typo.  Substitute few for many.

>  If so, I guess that they problem with predicate calculus is
>that there's no fudgeability with it, which nonfudgeability is exactly why
>one wants a logical language.

But fudgeability is fine for patent translation (maybe even desirable to
the lawyers), so long as the fudguing does not create an ambiguity
comparable to those of natlangs.

>  Note also that predicate logic is a subset
>of Lojban, so if you learn Lojban you learn predicate logic plus a load
>of extra stuff.

You learn the forms of predicate logic, more or less (but how many people
actually use the full set of Lojban logical connectives, for
example?).  But you do not learn to reason according to the rules of
inference along the lines of the predicate calculus.  If you did learn this
inherently while learning Lojban without having to study the subject, I
daresay that the original SWH concept for Loglan will have been proven.

I also think that a lot of that "extra stuff" is exactly the sort of thing
needed for patents, technical writing, formal specification, etc.  Again,
the attempts I know of anguages for these arenas have tended to have some
logical construct to them, but have always had to fall back on a natlang
like form.  If not enough like a natlang, they haven't been learnable; if
too much like a natlang, they haven't been sufficiently unambiguous.

> > >  Likewise for an IAL; if the EU did decide it
> > >would be economically advantageous (tho I think it wouldn't),
> > >for what reason (other than idiocy) would it opt for the
> > >halfarsed candidate IALs currently on the market?
> >
> > If it were easy to develop a better one, I am sure that people would have
> > done so already.
>
>Why? Most of the people who invent IALs are total lunatics, and most of the
>rest are either ignorant or dim.

But there is a market for an unambiguous specification language, which is
what we are talking about.  It would be usable in the computer industry for
software development, security verification, proof of program
correctness.  They were trying to solve the problem when I was still
working on that kind of stuff in the mid-80s, and I have not heard that the
problem has been solved.  They invent computer-languages to try to do this
kind of thing, but they never catch on as a standard, probably because you
can't speak LISP.  But you CAN now "speak PROLOG", given the known mapping
from a Lojban subset to PROLOG.

> > It isn't merely money that is lacking (though money would
> > be nice) - Interlingua had money backing it, and of course DLTs machine
> > translation internal interlanguage based on Esperanto had money backing
> > it.  A language sufficient to do the job will have to be sufficiently
> > complex, and G-d knows that balancing complexity vs. needed
> > features is far from easy.
> >
> > Then there is the key advantage of an existing language in that there are
> > people who already know it and who therefore can serve as
> > teachers, already written teaching materials that people can learn the
> > language from without teachers if necessary.  It took 3 years of teaching
> > material development to get Lojban to the point that Nick Nicholas could
> > teach himself the language from the materials and be able to write cogent
> > Lojban without a lot of coaching, and it took him a few more years of
> > work before he felt himself skilled at the language.  Only with the
> > advent of the Book have we had significant numbers able to teach
> > themselves Lojban, and a goodly number have said that even that is not
> > sufficient for them.  Going from raw language concept to the Book is
> > dozens of person-years of effort.  Going from there to even the current
> > level of Lojban prowess is many more person-years of effort on the part
> > of self-teachers.  And we don't yet have enough to teach the European
> > patent community (hence by initiation of this thread), much less the rest
> > of Europe.  There is a likelihood that Esperanto could come up with the
> > needed teachers reasonably quickly, especially given that for many it
> > would their first chance to make money using the language (which can be
> > a strong motivating force for many who have half-learned Esperanto,
> > probably including a goodly portion of this list).
>
>I'm not sure what point you're making.

The point is that any top-down application of an artificial language big
enough to point the way to large scale usage will inherently require that
the language be easy to learn, with sufficient language learning materials
that many can learn it by self-study and most anyone with more than minimal
verbal ability can learn it with a teacher.  The latter will of course take
sufficient skilled Lojbanists to serve as teachers.  In short it is the
"rapid bootstrap" problem that anything really new tends to have a steep
and time-expensive learning curve.  We have to reduce that steepness to
make Lojban successful.

>  I agree that there are these
>obstacles to the adoption of Lojban. And as I've said, I think Lojban
>and Esperanto would be poor choices for a patent language, or for a
>European IAL.

As a patent language it has to go beyond pan-European. Our German proponent
of the Lojban patent effort cited the difficulty of translating Japanese
patents as a strong reason in Lojban's favor.

> > >In my view, the Bottom-Up approach is the only viable one
> > >for Lojban and currently extant IALs.
> >
> > But is the bottom-up approach viable at all?  I think that it is a
> > necessary step - necessary to build the infrastructure of teachers and
> > teaching materials and lexicon, but the key problme of bottom-up is
> > achieving any sort of critical mass.
>
>I've never believed Lojban to be viable in the sense that you mean, and
>have no burning desire to assist it to become viable.

I understand.  But I raised the topic in order to find out if there are
ways to overcome the viability issues provided that the application shows
up.  You may not be interested in the possibility, but it is certain that
many others are.

> > Lojban has probably achieved critical mass enough to survive it
> > inventors (which makes it one of the most select of conlangs),
>
>I am certain this is so. There's now the Book, which contains pretty
>much all there is to know about the language, and I imagine it will
>always attract small numbers of people who find Lojban appealing.
>
> > but not necessarily enough to gain a respectable "market
> > share" among the languages of the world.  (I think Lojban has the
> > advantage that it needs a lot smaller number than other conlangs to
> > achieve critical mass, because Lojban unlike most conlangs DOES have
> > the sort of specialty application like patent law and
> computer-communications
> > that is economically viable with only a small fraction of the world
> learning
> > it.  And economic viability is the key to "top down" - a top down
> > approach will work when someone with power sees a way to make money using
> > the language.
>
>I very much doubt that this will happen, though it happening is Lojban's
>only real hope for achieving critical mass.

Yes.

>But at any rate, I don't see why you should care so much. I recognize that
>you've decided that the validation for all the efforts you've invested in
>Lojban is the creation of a living language rather than just a language,
>but I don't understand why you should make that the validation, especially
>when it's so improbable.

I see it as my job as President of LLG to work towards the goals of all
Lojbanists, including some that you may feel are less practical.  I got
into this project out of a sense of duty, which later expanded to become a
sense of mission.  There are people who want to seriously work on finding
applications for Lojban.   I need to make sure that LLG provides the
resources needed to make such efforts realizable, regardless of whether the
goals that the efforts are aiming at will be achieved.  The best thing I
can do is to make it so that when people try to promote Lojban for a
top-down goal, that there is enough substance backing them that they do not
seem foolish just for trying.  And if I do that, real money might "happen",
since venture capitalists these days are betting on a lot of things with
even slimmer odds for success than Lojban.

>  And the original idea that a loglan-speaking
>community would test sapirwhorf, I've always regarded as a bit of blarney
>baloney by JC Brown who really wanted to invent a language but was trying to
>(a) gain respectability for an ill-respected activity, (b) differentiate
>the product from others, (c) attract adherents.

I know the history enough to be sure that it was not blarney at the
time.  Remember that in the mid-50s, testing SWH was a big deal.  Remember
also that JCB came from the Campbell school of science fiction which I
think had a certain amount of SWH built into it.  He does seem to have
conceived of Loglan before the SWH became big, but I think that he
seriously wanted to make the language a research tool.

> > >  The only hope for
> > >Lojban to succeed Top-Downly is that some organization is
> > >intelligent enough to see the merits of adopting a logical
> > >language, but stupid enough to choose Lojban to do the job.
> >
> > Gee, thanks. %^)
>
>What I mean is this. First, the overriding goal of the Lojban project was
>always to get a minimally adequate product out into the world. The policy
>was "if it's not broken, don't fix it". But if you're an organization that
>is so dissatisfied with existing natural languages that you want to
>adopt a logical language, you're probably an organization that wants the
>language to be as good as is practicable. Secondly, and more importantly,
>Lojban was designed as a compromise between many different goals. It is
>probable that an organization adopting a logical language would have
>different and fewer goals, and that Lojban would be a relatively poor
>solution for these goals.

I agree up to a point.

But that point is the realization that the development of a language
superior to Lojban for a more focussed problem would be at least as big an
effort as has gone into Loglan/Lojban, but on a shorter timescale.  And
that is too much to be feasible.  Furthermore, a redevelopment would almost
certain be attempted as a proprietary effort because of the needed
investment, and I think TLI Loglan and DLT both demonstrated the folly of
trying to make a proprietary artificial language.  Lojban's strength has
been the diverse breadth of input that has gone into the language.

The question is whether Lojban, or a subset thereof is "good enough" for
some application.  I think it is.  Time will tell.  We certainly have the
creative and bright minds needed to find such applications that exist.

>I suppose that once one organization used Lojban, that would then become
>a reason in itself for other organizations to use it too. But I really
>can't see it being a sensible decision for any organization to adopt it
>otherwise. True, it already exists, so would save labour in concocting
>an alternative language, but if you're going to invest so much in getting
>your organization to use it, a redesign would probably save you cost
>in the long run.

Therefore we have to make the investment for an organization small compared
to the alternatives.  I think we can.  Having a public domain language is a
good start.

>I'm not hostile to Lojban. If the United Nations decided to choose a
>language to be a global general purpose second language, and if I
>had a vote, then if the choice had to be made from an existing language
>then I would vote for Lojban. And even if there was the option of
>designing a new language I would vote for Lojban to avoid the risk
>of the designed language being worse than Lojban.

%^)

> > >(This isn't an attack on Lojban. Lojban is more complex
> > >than it needs to be for limited, formal, written applications
> > >because it needs also to be usable for the full range of
> > >linguistic functions.
> >
> > What linguistic functions other than attitudinals are not needed
> > for patent work?
>
>Lojban is designed to be general purpose, flexible, nonconstraining,
>culturally neutral, etc. etc. The only two of its goals necessary
>for patent work are logicality and nonambiguity.

Culturally neutral is a biggy.  Nonconstraining and flexible are probably
important, because patent writeups in various natlangs to be translated
into Lojban will have their own natlang style and idiosyncrasies.  And
patent writeups tend to use very complicated language structures.

> > More importantly, how much simpler could a language optimally
> > designed for a limited purpose be than a Lojban subset that simply omits
> > those features not needed.  After all, a large portion of the
> > Loglan/Lojban concept is optionality of features.
>
>If you pared Lojban down to the smallest adequate portion you'd still
>be left with unnecessary stuff (e.g. zo'u, terminators) and what remained
>would be Lojban only in as much as that unnecessary stuff would remain
>and that the vocabulary items would be Lojban. And the vocabulary items
>being Lojban would be a positively unnecessary hindrance to efficient
>use of the language. It would be much easier for all concerned to use
>a posteriori European vocabulary.

In other words "Anglan".

> > Again, if it were so easy to do much better than Lojban, why hasn't anyone
> > even come close?
>
>First, it is not so easy to do better than Lojban if you have the same goals
>as Lojban. It is easier to do better than Lojban only if you have a more
>restricted set of goals. Second, if it is possible to do better than Lojban,
>with the same set of goals, this is largely because it is possible to learn
>from Lojban's 'mistakes', i.e. it is by standing on Lojban's shoulders that
>Lojban can be bettered. Third, even if it were easy to improve upon Lojban's
>design, there remains the matter of the huge amount of labour necessary to
>get any language to the level of completion that Lojban has attained.

#3 is a biggie.

>Also, in a certain sense, it has been proved that it is easy to do better
>than Lojban, because over the years people have often proposed valid
>improvements that were not adopted (on the grounds that completion was
>a more important goal than improvement).

It is not clear that the various proposals were mutually compatible and
workable; lots of things sound nice till you have to make them work in
usage.  As it is, Lojban suffered from "bells and whistles syndrome" as we
hung new features on because they were easy and did not conflict with the
past.  There was also a 4-5 year period at the beginning when improvement
was still considered, so long as certain basics were not lightly
challenged.  Nick and Cowan came in right at the end of that period, and in
fact may have ended it simply by being able to do what they then did with
the language.

lojbab
----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.

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#2141
12:00 AM Fri 31 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: On international  applications of Lojban
 From:  Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org

At 05:34 PM 12/30/99 -0500, Brook wrote:
>Now, unless you believe that "subject", "verb", and "object" are hardwired
>into
>brains, I'd submit that a young child exposed to a fluent lojban speaker could
>pick it up easily enough (I'm not fluent, but my three-year-old daughter seems
>to get the hang of lojban easily enough).

Tell us more!  Please!  What are you doing to facilitate it, and what has
she learned?  And can we talk you into keeping some type of logs if you
think she will acquire anything like fluency?

We are VERY interested in *all* attempts to teach Lojban to kids, including
up through high school age.

lojbab
----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.

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#2142
8:49 AM Fri 31 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: On international  applications of Lojban
 From:  Robin Turner
From: Robin Turner robi-@bilkent.edu.tr

"Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" wrote:
>  But you CAN now "speak PROLOG", given the known mapping
> from a Lojban subset to PROLOG.

Sounds interesting - can you clarify?

Robin

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#2143
9:38 AM Fri 31 Dec 99
 Subject:  Re: On  international applications of Lojban
 From:  Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org

At 06:40 PM 12/31/99 +0200, Robin Turner wrote:
>"Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" wrote:
> >  But you CAN now "speak PROLOG", given the known mapping
> > from a Lojban subset to PROLOG.
>
>Sounds interesting - can you clarify?

Not a lot to say. Cowan wrote it up in one of the last JL issues, with
examples, which I hope to get up on line soon.  Basically all PROLOG
statements map fairly trivially into Lojban bridi.  Nick Nicholas worked on
a Lojban-to-PROLOG translator for a subset of Lojban, which is probably
either on the lojban.org site or his homepage.  I recall that the only
PROLOG statement that does not have an obvious Lojban equivalent is the
cut, which seems like a job for a metalinguistic bridi.  Those who actually
know something about PROLOG may be more informative.

lojbab
----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.

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