Fractal Lojban Sentences
Well, we can argue a bit about whether a thing
can be good or not (rather than some property of
or fact about the thing). There are several
places remaining which have to be (for logic
sake) about abstractions but which are not so
marked . "Have to be" because they are opaque,
that is they may be about nonexistents without
affecting the truth-value of the whole. Saying
that x1 is good does not seem to be the same sort
of problem. The claim that unicorns are good is
simply false if there are no unicorns, whereas it
may still be true that I talked about unicorns
(as, indeed, I just did). The problem with
saying x1 is good is not a logical one but rather
one of analysis of a situation. I don't see that
Lojban needs to be wedded to a particular
philosophy (teleological ethics, say) in the same
way it needs to be wedded to logical points.
{nelci2} is a paradigm, however, of an opaque
place (which Lojban in principle — though not
always in fact) deals with by requiring that the
sumti there refer, however, obscurely, to an
abstraction, an intensional object.
> Re: Re: Fractal Lojban Sentences
> > The text of the sentence:
>
> > mi nelci tu'a lonu do tavla fi lodu'u kei
> kei mu'i lodu'u losi'o kei bebna kei
>
> > Is {tu'a lonu...} intentional? Is it needed?
>
> > mi'e clsn
>
> Yes, the {tu'a} was used intentionally, because
> it is logically accurate to use {tu'a} in this
> case.
>
> Take the gismu {facki}, for exmaple. Its place
> structure is ''x1 discovers/finds out x2 (du'u)
> about subject/object x3''. The x2 place of
> {facki} is explicitly defined to be an
> abstraction, because you can't discover or find
> an object, but only ''something about an
> object'' (a fact, {lodu'u}). In English, you
> might say "I find my hat.". But it Lojban
> (even though {mi facki le mi mapku} is
> gramamtical), this sentence is only
> properly expressed {mi facki tu'a le mi
> mapku} (assuming you mean something like "I
> find (where is) my hat") or {mi facki fi le mi
> mapku} (specifying the object about which the
> discovery is made, but leaving the discovery to
> be inferred).
>
> In this sense, gismu like {xamgu}, {nitcu}, and
> {nelci}, whose x1 places should be {ka}s or
> other abstractions in order to be logically
> correct, are overgenerally defined. A
> thing is not good for something
> else, you can't need things, and you
> can't like things; but ''something
> about a thing'' can be good for some
> purpose (abstract), you can need
> something about a thing for a given
> purpose, and you can like ''something about
> a thing''. Compare these to {badri}, {djica},
> and the x3 place of {nitcu}, which are already
> defined to be sufficiently abstract. Gismu
> like {prami}, which allows an object or
> abstraction as its x2 place, walk the fine line
> between being sufficiently and insufficiently
> constrained.
>
> In my opinion, not using abstractions in
> places such as these is malglico and,
> technically, illogical. I think that the
> over-generality of these gismu definitions
> (along with a number of other features of the
> language) reflects the fact that the creaters
> of Lojban were primarily native speakers of
> English. When I speak Lojban, I try as much as
> possible to avoid {glikemnorlogji} and to be as
> logically correct as possible. After all,
> that's one of the major reasons I decided to
> learn to speak Lojban!
>
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