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''Isn't it funny how some selbri imply that an event really occurred, while others don't. Like:''
A story told like by an idiot, full of funny sounds and phooey!


mi catlu le nu do morsi
;:--Hyman Kaplan (by Leo Rosten) retelling ''Macbeth''


I watch you die (and you really do die, else how could I watch it?)
* What if Lojban had a "th" sound and not that glottal ''(velar, actually'') X.
** Can we say "glico-centric"? What tiny fraction of the planet can pronounce th? Greece, and some N Europeans (England, Iceland)...who else?


mi tolpacna le nu do morsi
** [[Loglan|Loglan]] has th, spelled ''q'', but doesn't allow it in native words: ''Qiydor'' = Theodore.  It also has a high front rounded vowel spelled ''w'', as in ''wlframi'' = wolfram, tungsten.
** Lojban also has a loglan w. We spell it ''i''. Lojban vowels do not specify roundedness.


I don't hope you die (and you probably didn't yet!)
*** Lojban has a th sound. It is written ' and while it is not the standard pronounciation at least two people ([[kreig.daniyl. e|(kreig.daniyl. e]] and [[pc|pc]]) use it. Thus, the name Katherine should be transliterated as ''kA'eren.'' rather than ''kAteren.'' - /T/ is not a stop, and transliterating it as one stops people from pronouncing the name correctly. - miqe. [[.kreig.daniyl.|.kreig.daniyl.]]
**** You would last about 5 minutes at Logfest if you tried that "th" stunt.


''So, watch me ignite a flame war:''
***** The pronunciation police would take him out back and give him what-for?
****** ...Only to have me quote the book at them - /T/ is an "allowable variant" of ' - miqe. kreig.daniyl.


mi tolpacna le nu da'inai do morsi
* What if Lojban had a voiced velar fricative to go along with X (call it Q), and consonant clusters such as ''kx'' and ''gq'' were allowed.
** Too many people have trouble with voiced velar fricatives (''they sound like gagging'')


I don't hope you die (but yet, you do!)
** This has not been a phoneme in any living language I know of since Sanskrit died out/evolved.
*** But a quick browse through the linguistics section of a decent library would show you that plenty of living languages have a ''gh'' phoneme. Not meaning it as a putdown, but surely you realize that there are thousands of living languages... ([[User:And Rosta|And Rosta]])


I think that ''da'i'' marks whether the speakers thinks that the events so marked is a likely enough to be considered, but the event may still occur even if it was marked with ''da'i'' (or not occur even though it's marked with ''da'inai'').
** It is a phoneme in Irish, written ''dh'' or ''gh''; also in Arabic. ''I thought irish dh was a voiced th - a dental fricative, not a velar one.'' No, [[John Cowan|John Cowan]] mean ''Irish'', not Irish-accented English. ''I had been led to believe that it was equivalent to welsh ''dd'', which is a voiced dental fricative. I guess not.''
*** The voiced velar fricative is an /r/ allophone in some western Norwegian dialects ''and it's the realisation of /r/ in standard German, at least to [[pne y|pne y]] ears'', and a /g/ allophone in Spanish. --[[User:tsali|tsali]]


''Somehow my instincts tell me a jbojbe would not be confused by this. The flame war will start when somebody tries to argue that, since da'inai is in inside nu, it somehow gets nullified. This, however, is valid too:''
**** So not a seperate phoneme. Plus the only native spanish speakers I have talked to have been in spain, where it is /x/ or /h/, depending on the region. - la [[.kreig.daniyl.|.kreig.daniyl.]]
*** Are you talking about the voiced velar fricative or 'ng'? Isn't the former a phoneme in Arabic? {cein}


mi catlu le nu da'i do morsi
**** The former. I don't know, I don't speak Arabic.
** Voiced velar fricative is also a phone in Modern Greek (spelled 'gamma' before back vowels)... though since ''g'' has allophones ''voiced velar fricative'' before back vowels and ''voiced palatal approximant'' before front vowels, I suppose you could quibble as to which is the underlying phoneme.


I watch you allegedly die
** Can we at least make gh an allowable variant of x?
* How about a 'ng' for that matter? {cein}


''So what's with the phantom da'is in there that I must actively override, sometimes? --[[User:xod|xod]]''
** See [[ng rant|ng rant]]
** As for ng, try pronouncing a /nk/ without it becoming /Nk/. Now try /Nt/ that isn't secretly /nt/.


Some selbri, like djuno and catlu, are inherently factive: the abstractions they talk about have real-world counterparts. Others, like kucli, are inherently non-factive. This is a fact about the Real World.
*** That's exactly my point. I think we agree. Same goes for m/mp. Why include m and n but not ng just because it's not commonly a phoneme? {cein}
**** It is commonly a phoneme (English, Chinese), but I at least can pronounce both m and n in ALL the contexts where I can pronounce either.


''Keep in mind that we had a very long flame war over djuno being factive. "know" is factive, but "djuno" is only relative to djuno4.''
***** ''ki'a''
****** It is possible to pronounce both /amta/ and /anta/, or /ampa/ and /anta/ - but it is very difficult to say /aNta/ and almost impossible to say /aNpa/. ''I have no difficulty doing so... Actually IPA has the simultaneous (or quick succession) k-p in it's tables. --mi'e greg''


''And are they facts about the real world? Or Englishistic factoids? Why can't I catlu something that never occurred? I could have been mistaken or dreaming. We already showed in a very long flame war that I can djuno a falsehood. --[[User:xod|xod]]''
******* /amta/=/ampta/, /anpa/=/antpa/,/aNta/=/aNkta/. /mp/, /nt/, and /Nk/ are indivisible. {cein}
******* Ah, intrusive stops.  They occur in a lot of environments (like the p in "warm'''p'''th" and "ham'''p'''ster" or the d in "sin'''d'''cerely"), in some people's mouths.  I know I can say /amta/ and /anpa/ and /aNta/ without them. Me, I can't see how to do /pm/ without either a buffer vowel or nasal release (which isn't a specified phoneme in Lojban). Intrusive stops have to do with spreading the "stopness" of the nasal onto the adjacent continuent (yes, nasals are considered stops, because '''oral''' airflow is blocked).


* Long, confused, and IMO pointless flamewar between xod and xorxes on the [[jbocre: factivity of djuno|factivity of djuno]]. Thanks a bunch, guys, for not clarifying anything -- [[User:Nick Nicholas|nitcion]], fuming.
****** Sure.  They're phonemes in languages like Okpe, Igbo, Yoruba, etc.  I think Igbo actually has consonant clusters of gb-b etc.
* What if [[gua\spi|Gua\spi]]/welsh/others? ''y'', a lax i, were an allowed variant of lojban y or of i?


----
** The ''i'' sound as in ''"hit"'' is used optionally in between consecutive consonants. "c-mavo", where the - represents this sound, is an alternative pronunciation of "cmavo".
** Any non-lojban vowel can be used for this. When I need one, I use the ''u'' sound in ''"put"''.


Perhaps, instead of calling selbri absolutely factive or absolutely not, we should say that we [[jbocre: glork|glork]] their claims to be factual. If you say ''mi catlu le nu do morsi'', I will normally expect ''do ca morsi''--but not always. If you are standing on stage next to a hypnotist, I may expect that you are deluded (you're making a statement about your beliefs of the moment, but not about the world). Or I may recognize that you are talking about a hypothetical situation, or about the events of a puppet show, relying on the non-veridicality of ''le'' (you're making a statement about some ''munje'', but not about the real world). Or, if you're talking about me and I consider myself alive, I may have no idea why you're saying such a thing, but I'll still consider it false--maybe I would understand you to be saying "how can you be alive, I saw you die!" ''mi'e [[jbocre: jezrax|jezrax]]''
*** I think the ''put'' vowel sounds too much like ''y'' (unless i just don't know how to pronounce ''y'') for this use to be unambiguous.  This especially since ''y'' is never stressed and therefore is more condusive to alternate pronunciations. {cein}
*** Since the buffer vowel is a lojban vowel, its definition as "any vowel other than the six others" is rather crazy. All the same, I grit my teeth and use [[y|y]] (of e.g. French ''tu''): ''zmadu'' = [[zymadu|zymadu]]. I'd have preferred that schwa be the buffer vowel and [[y|y]] be the realization of /y/. --[[User:And Rosta|And Rosta]]


* ''I like this. Adherence to reality may compel us to use these words in an predictable manner, but we probably shouldn't import that philosophy into the language, keeping it able to express confusing or nonsensical ideas. --[[User:xod|xod]]''
**** [[y|y]] is a valid pronunciation for the letter ''i''. [[zymadu|zymadu]] should be interpreted as ''zi ma du''.
 
***** We are not discussing the front high rounded vowel here, but the unrounded high lax front vowels, spelled as y in guaspi and welsh (though the welsh y can also be like our y), I in Klingon, � in Verdurian, i in English (in this sentence, the words pronounced with this sound would be discussing, Klingon, English, in, this, with, it, and is). It is generally accepted by everyone that (rounded i) is a variant of i, and (rounded e) is a variant of e I will not refer to IPA /y/, as different ascizations of IPA disagree on what this means, but I am assuming that you have gone with the one in the online Refgram, which interprets it as (rounded i) - and if this is what you mean, then you are right, it is an i. The vowel in 'fish', however, is not actually a legal Lojban vowel, though some allowed pronunciations of e get close. The question is why not, when all vowels except i have their lax forms as variants. - mi'e [[.kreig.daniyl.|.kreig.daniyl.]]
----
 
Right. Let's start again, shall we?
 
* Presupposition is a fact. ''lo'' presupposes the existence of its referent, just the same as "The present King of France" does.
* Lojban indubitably has factive predicates. That is part of their definition. e.g. ''snada''
 
* Factivity means that, where A is the matrix proposition and B the complement, if A is true (in this world) then so is B. So, take the claim ''mi snada lenu mi cikna'' . If ''mi snada'' is true in this world, then ''mi cikna'' must be true in this world. By definition. Else, ''snada'' does not apply.
* This is not compromised by counterfactuals. ''.i da'i mi snada lenu mi cikna'' makes both A and B counterfactual. ''.i da'i mi snada lenu da'inai mi cikna'', however, is a paradox.
 
** It need not be a paradox. If my awakeness is not a result of my trying to stay awake, then it is not a {da'inai se snada}. But it is an odd thing to say anyway. --[[User:xorxes|xorxes]]
* The same holds for ''catlu''. What you see happens: if you ''do'' see, then both A and B are true in this world. If you hallucinated that you saw it, then it wasn't real --- but neither was the seeing. Factivity says that either both ''nu catlu'' and ''se catlu'' are true in this world, or both ''nu catlu'' and ''se catlu'' are counterfactual.
 
* xod claims that ''mi catlu le nu da'i do morsi'' is valid. If he means ''mi da'inai catlu le nu da'i do morsi'' is valid (or, better still, ''mi romu'ei catlu le nu do su'omu'ei morsi''), I say he is wrong. That's as much a paradox as saying ''da ge jetnu de gi jitfa de''.
* When verbs aren't factive, they aren't necessarily antifactive either: a verb that does not presuppose its complement may ''still'' have its complement be true. Thus both the following are perfectly acceptable: ''mi tolpacna le nu da'i do morsi''; ''mi tolpacna le nu da'inai do morsi''
 
* We are forgetting, however, in our eagerness to have a fight :-| , that all complement clauses in Lojban '''already''' have a presuppositional marker. ''lonu''.
* So if you say ''lo xelso cu djuno lo du'u do pilno lo tutci'', the source for the truth of ''du'u do pilno lo tutci'' is identical to the source for the existence of ''lo xelso''. They are both claimed to exist (to be true) in the prenex. And there ain't no epistemology place in the prenex.
 
* That said, once you've admitted x4 into ''djuno'', I am quite prepared to admit it isn't factive any more. Because factivity ''does'' presume Absolute Truth. Or at least as much Absolute Truth as do prenexes, and ''lo noltaitru be le fasygu'e''. And that's incompatible with relative epistemologies.
* The distinction between ''djuno'' and ''krici'' then does indeed become nebulous. But not unformalisable.
 
* In summary, on the broad picture I probably agree with xod. In all the details of the discussion, I found myself agreeing with xorxes instead. (The business about "if you extensionally would call each of your opinions true, how can you say you know some of your opinions to be false" was quite galling: I didn't expect xod to be so logical positivist. But then, I've had that misunderstanding with xod before.)
* Finally, jezrax's point is true: since the late '70s, linguists' understandin of presupposition has moved from semantic to pragmatic (i.e. glorkable.) But of course, if we're pretending to be a logical language, we're also pretending to hang on to at least some logical machinery.
 
--- mi'e [[User:Nick Nicholas|nitcion]]
 
----
 
* Presupposition is a fact. ''lo'' presupposes the existence of its referent, just the same as "The present King of France" does.
** Sorry to butt in, Nick, but did you mean ''le''? Surely you do. --[[User:And Rosta|And Rosta]]
 
**No, I actually do mean ''lo''. 'Cause it's  veridical.
* Lojban indubitably has factive, i.e. presupposing predicates. That is part of their definition. e.g. ''snada''
 
** Indubitably factive. But it is controversial to claim that they are presupposing. --[[User:And Rosta|And Rosta]]
* Logical presupposition means that, where A is the matrix proposition and B the complement, if A is true (in this world) then so is B. So, take the claim ''mi snada lenu mi cikna'' . If ''mi snada'' is true in this world, then ''mi cikna'' must be true in this world. By definition. Else, ''snada'' does not apply.
 
** You are describing factivity, not presupposition. If you negate A, is the sentence still saying (albeit not necessarily 'claiming') that B is true? If Yes, then there is presupposition. If No, then there isn't. The consensus regarding ''djuno'' when last it was debated on Lojban list was that ''djuno'' is factive but not presuppositional. --[[User:And Rosta|And Rosta]]
** (You mean, there's ever consensus in those discussions? Then the onus is on you guys to keep writing any such consensuses up.) The early definitions of factivity were in terms of presupposition. Things got more and more muddled through the '70s, but actually, I don't think that's germane to what I'm arguing, which is that ''da'inai'' is built in to some Lojban predicates, and ''da'i'' to others.

Latest revision as of 16:22, 23 March 2014

A story told like by an idiot, full of funny sounds and phooey!

--Hyman Kaplan (by Leo Rosten) retelling Macbeth
  • What if Lojban had a "th" sound and not that glottal (velar, actually) X.
    • Can we say "glico-centric"? What tiny fraction of the planet can pronounce th? Greece, and some N Europeans (England, Iceland)...who else?
    • Loglan has th, spelled q, but doesn't allow it in native words: Qiydor = Theodore. It also has a high front rounded vowel spelled w, as in wlframi = wolfram, tungsten.
    • Lojban also has a loglan w. We spell it i. Lojban vowels do not specify roundedness.
      • Lojban has a th sound. It is written ' and while it is not the standard pronounciation at least two people ((kreig.daniyl. e and pc) use it. Thus, the name Katherine should be transliterated as kA'eren. rather than kAteren. - /T/ is not a stop, and transliterating it as one stops people from pronouncing the name correctly. - miqe. .kreig.daniyl.
        • You would last about 5 minutes at Logfest if you tried that "th" stunt.
          • The pronunciation police would take him out back and give him what-for?
            • ...Only to have me quote the book at them - /T/ is an "allowable variant" of ' - miqe. kreig.daniyl.
  • What if Lojban had a voiced velar fricative to go along with X (call it Q), and consonant clusters such as kx and gq were allowed.
    • Too many people have trouble with voiced velar fricatives (they sound like gagging)
    • This has not been a phoneme in any living language I know of since Sanskrit died out/evolved.
      • But a quick browse through the linguistics section of a decent library would show you that plenty of living languages have a gh phoneme. Not meaning it as a putdown, but surely you realize that there are thousands of living languages... (And Rosta)
    • It is a phoneme in Irish, written dh or gh; also in Arabic. I thought irish dh was a voiced th - a dental fricative, not a velar one. No, John Cowan mean Irish, not Irish-accented English. I had been led to believe that it was equivalent to welsh dd, which is a voiced dental fricative. I guess not.
      • The voiced velar fricative is an /r/ allophone in some western Norwegian dialects and it's the realisation of /r/ in standard German, at least to pne y ears, and a /g/ allophone in Spanish. --tsali
        • So not a seperate phoneme. Plus the only native spanish speakers I have talked to have been in spain, where it is /x/ or /h/, depending on the region. - la .kreig.daniyl.
      • Are you talking about the voiced velar fricative or 'ng'? Isn't the former a phoneme in Arabic? {cein}
        • The former. I don't know, I don't speak Arabic.
    • Voiced velar fricative is also a phone in Modern Greek (spelled 'gamma' before back vowels)... though since g has allophones voiced velar fricative before back vowels and voiced palatal approximant before front vowels, I suppose you could quibble as to which is the underlying phoneme.
    • Can we at least make gh an allowable variant of x?
  • How about a 'ng' for that matter? {cein}
    • See ng rant
    • As for ng, try pronouncing a /nk/ without it becoming /Nk/. Now try /Nt/ that isn't secretly /nt/.
      • That's exactly my point. I think we agree. Same goes for m/mp. Why include m and n but not ng just because it's not commonly a phoneme? {cein}
        • It is commonly a phoneme (English, Chinese), but I at least can pronounce both m and n in ALL the contexts where I can pronounce either.
          • ki'a
            • It is possible to pronounce both /amta/ and /anta/, or /ampa/ and /anta/ - but it is very difficult to say /aNta/ and almost impossible to say /aNpa/. I have no difficulty doing so... Actually IPA has the simultaneous (or quick succession) k-p in it's tables. --mi'e greg
              • /amta/=/ampta/, /anpa/=/antpa/,/aNta/=/aNkta/. /mp/, /nt/, and /Nk/ are indivisible. {cein}
              • Ah, intrusive stops. They occur in a lot of environments (like the p in "warmpth" and "hampster" or the d in "sindcerely"), in some people's mouths. I know I can say /amta/ and /anpa/ and /aNta/ without them. Me, I can't see how to do /pm/ without either a buffer vowel or nasal release (which isn't a specified phoneme in Lojban). Intrusive stops have to do with spreading the "stopness" of the nasal onto the adjacent continuent (yes, nasals are considered stops, because oral airflow is blocked).
            • Sure. They're phonemes in languages like Okpe, Igbo, Yoruba, etc. I think Igbo actually has consonant clusters of gb-b etc.
  • What if Gua\spi/welsh/others? y, a lax i, were an allowed variant of lojban y or of i?
    • The i sound as in "hit" is used optionally in between consecutive consonants. "c-mavo", where the - represents this sound, is an alternative pronunciation of "cmavo".
    • Any non-lojban vowel can be used for this. When I need one, I use the u sound in "put".
      • I think the put vowel sounds too much like y (unless i just don't know how to pronounce y) for this use to be unambiguous. This especially since y is never stressed and therefore is more condusive to alternate pronunciations. {cein}
      • Since the buffer vowel is a lojban vowel, its definition as "any vowel other than the six others" is rather crazy. All the same, I grit my teeth and use y (of e.g. French tu): zmadu = zymadu. I'd have preferred that schwa be the buffer vowel and y be the realization of /y/. --And Rosta
        • y is a valid pronunciation for the letter i. zymadu should be interpreted as zi ma du.
          • We are not discussing the front high rounded vowel here, but the unrounded high lax front vowels, spelled as y in guaspi and welsh (though the welsh y can also be like our y), I in Klingon, � in Verdurian, i in English (in this sentence, the words pronounced with this sound would be discussing, Klingon, English, in, this, with, it, and is). It is generally accepted by everyone that (rounded i) is a variant of i, and (rounded e) is a variant of e I will not refer to IPA /y/, as different ascizations of IPA disagree on what this means, but I am assuming that you have gone with the one in the online Refgram, which interprets it as (rounded i) - and if this is what you mean, then you are right, it is an i. The vowel in 'fish', however, is not actually a legal Lojban vowel, though some allowed pronunciations of e get close. The question is why not, when all vowels except i have their lax forms as variants. - mi'e .kreig.daniyl.