Re: cukta

[Jorge Llambias <jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU>]

la'o gy Bob Slaughter gy cusku di'e

> NSN>And this one of the areas I was thinking about, when I said the other day
> NSN>that Lojban will probably succeed by failing in its avowed aims. Lojban
> NSN>(I claim) is built on a particular view of semantics: one in which {le jei
> NSN>da broda} is taken as 0 or 1 --- one in which you can make black or white
> NSN>judgements. X either is a book, or isn't. In that context, it is
> NSN>*meaningful* to ask "is a collection of blank pages bound together
> NSN>a book or not?"
>
> I just noticed that we may be confusing *semantic* truth with logical truth.


> The statement "I am a Klingon" is *logically* true, because it is gramatically
> properly formed, hence semantic input (wherther I am a Klingon or not) gives
> meaningful output.

I would prefer to say that it is logically valid, rather than true, but the
idea is the same. This is related to Colin's +/-features. If there is a
conflict, then the statement fails logically, and asking about its semantic
truth is almost meaningless.

To say that a collection of blank pages is a book, doesn't fail the category
compatibility, as long as we're talking of the physical book. If we're
talking of books like "Pride and Prejudice", there is a conflict.

In English, a "book" can be this thing that I'm holding in my hand, or a
work by L.M.Alcott, two meanings for the same word that are related but
are two different things, with different properties. If I understand lojbab's
last post correctly, cukta relates these two types of objects, the physical
object being x1 and the literary work being x2.

I think this has nothing to do with what is the truth value of {le selpapri
cu cukta} (the bundle of pages is a book). The truth value of that doesn't
have to be 0 or 1, but there is no conflict of the +concrete/-concrete sort.

> "I am a sleeping" is *logically* false, because it fails to
> parse (barring slang: "I am a-sleeping"; not what I meant).

Again, I prefer logically invalid, leaving semantic truth/falsity aside
as irrelevant.

In lojban, things like that can "parse", if by that we understand that they
are accepted by the parser, but in my opinion, they're just as invalid
as in English.

Jorge