Re: replies re. ka & mamta be ma

[jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU]

And:
> > > > > Every lg needs a word/morpheme for "1", but doesn't need one
> > > > > word/morpheme for "7582342".
> > > "Need" by some criterion whereby the language ought to approximately
> > > model cognition/world-view.
> That criterion would apply for the 1/7582342 case. In the case of
> pronouns we have different criteria: the tradeoff between ease of
> usage and complexity of grammar (which makes a lg more difficult
> to learn & use). This criterion is the one I was ignoring for
> the purposes of our thought-experiment.

So you are saying that in order to model cognition, a word for "1" is
indispensable. You wouldn't accept a description like {le namcu pe
le solri}. What makes the description a worse choice to express that
idea? (Other than the length of it, which could even be shortened with
an appropriate lujvo.)

> I also hold that a lg is a partial model of a world view (not
> necessarily the world view of any specific actual person). It
> is legitimate to hope for a reasonable match between one's
> world view and that modelled by the language one is using.

Does this mean that there are ideas expressable in some language
and unexpressable in another? I find this very hard to believe,
especially given that languages are not rigid and can easily grow
to accommodate new ideas.

> For example, if Lojban had a gismu such that its x1 are
> either feet or alphabets, I would find it strange that (i)
> feet & alphabets constitute an intuitive category, and (ii)
> this category is relatively useful or basic (as gismu-hood
> implies).

You mean homonyms? I would find it strange too, but I don't see how
that would affect my world view (whatever that is).

> I am indeed speaking of different sorts of need. As for it being
> just as arguable that a word like "kau" is needed (by this world-
> view) criterion, yes it is arguable, but that doesn't mean such
> an argument will be convincing. At present, I don't see how you
> would argue the case.

I would argue that {kau} is in the same boat with {pa}. Your
argument against works just as well for {pa}:

> Here is my case against: Given a sentence S,
> from S can be derived a proposition, P, which constitutes part
> of the meaning of S. P can be represented using pred calc, & pred
> calc, in matters such as scope, quantification, variables, etc.,
> is a reasonable model of P as it is in our minds. {kau} (in its
> "indirect interrogative" use is merely a syntactic variant of
> {kau}-less circumlocution, since both variants come out the same
> when the S is translated into P done in prec calc.

Replace the last sentence with:

{pa} is merely a syntactic variant of a {pa}-less circumlocution,
since both variants come out the same when the S is translated into P
done in pred calc.

> I'd been assuming we were talking about syntax/grammar. If you
> have two alternative syntactic devices with same meaning then one
> is redundant (e.g. "X kissed Y"/"X was kissed by" "long book"/
> "book that is long").

Those are simple cases, and even then, they are not really "syntactic
devices with the same meaning". If you replace X with "everybody" and
Y with "someone" you get two different meanings.

In any case, that doesn't show that you've reduced the ways of expressing
an idea to one. Suppose you make one of "long book" and "book that is long"
ungrammatical. There is still "book of great length", and who knows how
many others. If the language is really a language for human comunication,
then there will be many ways, and the more complex the idea, the more ways
there will probably be to express it. Even if for such simple constructions
you succeed in making only one way grammatical, as you increase the
complexity of the concept, surely there will be many ways to say the same
thing.

> > My point is that once you have a language capable of expressing
> > human thought, a fortiori you have a language where every idea can be
> > expressed in a very large variety of ways.
>
> I'm saying that in principle you can restrict the grammar-lexicon
> so that identical expressions of a given idea invoke the same set
> of rules of grammar-lexicon.

What do you mean by "identical expressions"? If they are truly identical,
then obviously they invoke the same rules.

> It is obvious that no language has
> an infinite array of grammatical devices,

To me it is not obvious, but I'll take your word for it.

> so for every lg there
> is a finite number of grammatical devices employable in expressing
> a given idea. I claim that this finite number can in principle be
> restricted to one.

And I claim that it can't, if the language can truly express human
thought.

> I am assuming that sentences "expressing the same
> idea" are truth-conditionally equivalent.

Do you consider {ko'a zmadu ko'e} and {ko'e mleca ko'a} truth-conditionally
equivalent? Do you allow semantics to determine truth-conditionality?

> > > > In fact, I doubt that you could device a language
> > > > for standard human comunication in which each idea can be expressed in
> > > > a unique single way.
> > > This is not the goal I've been speculating about. Rather, I've been
> > > speculating about minimizing the size of the grammar.
> > You could reduce the grammar to zero by having a different word for each
> > different idea. "a" would mean "Please, pass the salt", "aa" would mean
> > "Thank you", "aaa" would mean "It looks like we'll have rain tomorrow",
> > and so on. You would need a very large dictionary, but only a trivial
> > grammar.
> In my view the grammar includes the lexicon, so your suggestion would
> vastly increase the size of the grammar, though it would reduce the
> complexity of the grammar. Anyway, needless to say, your proposal wd
> have very different properties from natural languages, since nat lgs
> use a finite grammar to generate an infinite set of sentences, which
> can express novel ideas.

In that language, there is also an infinite number of sentences. Every
novel idea is simply added at the end of the dictionary.

> > That wouldn't work for humans, but I'm not sure whether you are
> > imposing the condition that humans should be able to handle it.
>
> I would impose this condition, but under the heading of "necessary
> conveniences" rather than "necessary for expressive power".

Ok, but {kau} and {pa} both fall in that category.

> Going back to {Q-kau}, I don't believe we understand it by magic:
> rather we unconsciously translate it into a logical structure (however
> difficult it may be to fathom consciously) and that constitutes our
> understanding of Q-kau.

That may or may not be the underlying mechanism of understanding,
but how do you know that it is so for {kau} and not for {pa}?

> I'll demonstrate my thesis: Most kinds of attributive adjective are
> semantically equivalent to a construction where the adj is used
> predicatively in a relative clause - long book/book that is long.
> These types of attrib adj could be got rid of, and we would still
> be able to express the idea of long books - by "books that are long".

That only shows that you can dispense with one syntactic construction.
(Overlooking the use of "most".) That doesn't mean that you are left with
only one way of expressing attributes in English.

> Dismissing {kau} affects the grammar because (a) the size of the lexicon
> is reduced (by one) [(a) is not semantics, but then nor is it the sort
> of simplification we've been talking about], and (b) the lexeme-specific
> and complicated rules for deriving semantic structure from syntactic
> structure containg {kau} could be scrapped. (i) Whether you call (b)
> syntax, and (ii) whether whether you call (b) syntax is important depend
> on your chosen theory. For the purposes of this discussion, I count
> (b) as something on the list of things to be simplified (in the
> hypothetical minimal language).

The lexicon of Lojban is unbounded (thanks to lujvo and le'avla/fu'ivla)
but in any case, we can assume that it is large enough that the number
of cmavo is irrelevant in that respect (which doesn't mean that I wouldn't
get rid of quite a few of them, but that's another discussion).

As for (b), if scrapping the semantico-syntactic rules relevant to {kau}
simplifies the grammar, so would doing the same thing with respect to {pa}.

Jorge