Re: [lojban-beginners] questions about lojban

[Ian Johnson]

{mi} is not quite "I/we", it is "the speaker(s)". Usually there is only one speaker, in which case it is "I", but in special cases where there are several speakers, it becomes "we", but only to the inclusion of the other speakers.

Lojban is first about unambiguous grammar, with that grammar providing a certain small amount of unambiguous semantics. But the difference between ambiguity and vagueness should be kept in mind when studying it. There are things that are explicitly unspecified, such as tense in an unmarked sentence, and there are things that could be interpreted one of several sharply different ways, but where the speaker probably only meant one. "Time flies like an arrow" is the classic example in English. We try to exclude the latter, not the former. This is part of why there's no default tense. Another reason is that fairly often no tense is desired at all, as you begin to realize with conversational practice.

I agree that the x2 default after the selbri is a bit of a quirk. It is, however, somewhat convenient in subordinate clauses, in that it lets you drop the x1 when the x1 is supplied from outside the clause. For example in {mi klama lo zarci noi vecnu lo plise}, the relative clause pro-sumti {ke'a} is implicitly in the x1 there, since the x2 is filled and the x1 is not. This is common enough that the quirk is actually pretty useful.

Place structure patterns are fairly extensive. They don't seem that way when you don't know very many gismu, but they exist, and are how you learn words after you know a handful. The most natural analogy I can think of is to inflected languages: lojban essentially has numbered instead of named cases. Without a SE, the x1 is essentially nominative while the x2 is essentially accusative.

mi'e la latro'a mu'o

On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 1:42 PM, tjerk <tjsc...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm interested in lojban. I hope to state complicated meanings very clearly using lojban,
and without the need for further clarifications as is common in natural languages.

A son of mine has dyslexia, and I read that languages in which each letter can only
be pronounced in one way is much easier for dyslectics to read. Sounds very plausible.
Finnish could help then. But lojban also. Further, language is really his thing. He began
to speak very young and he makes quite complicated grammatical constructions. And generally
knows the effect on meaning changing places of words have. lojban could help him to
transfer his ability in spoken language to written language. And I hope we can have some
fun together learning it.

So far for my motivation. I have some questions and remarks about lojban.

1.
'mi' in lojban means I and also we. So, here lojban is more ambiguous than english. But
lojban is supposed to be less ambiguous than english. Lojban has another 3 words for we,
meaning: me and you, you and others, me and others and not you. So 'mi' could have been
reserved for I without losing expressiveness.
I suppose this thing of lojban is because lojban leaves number open by default. 'le karci'
means the car or the cars. Does 'le pa karci' mean the car and only that, so not the cars?
If so, does 'pa mi' mean I and not we?
Why is there no article in lojban that means exactly one of something?

2.
Tense is also open by default in lojban. So 'mi klama le zarci' can mean I go to the market,
and it can mean I went to the market, and it can mean I will go the market. So this is again
more ambiguous than english. Of course there are words to specify the time, but why is
present tense not the default? Minimizing guessing using context is one of the main goals of
lojban, not?

3.
In lojban the predicate(selbri) can be put everywhere in a sentence, except at the best
place, the begin. That is the normal place for a function. And a selbri is a kind of
function. 'fa' has to be used to be able to put the selbri at the begin: klama fa mi le
zarci. Maybe another cmavo also works.
Where did it go wrong? Trying to resemble the SVO structure of english?

4.
The main effect the place structure grammar of lojban seems to have is elimination of
prepositions. I have my doubts about this. For example, compare 'I go to the market' and 'I
talk to you'. Very different things are happening, but there is also similarity. There is
a destination in both, and that is why to is used in both cases.
In the place structure grammar of lojban a place has no meaning on its own (although 1st
place is maybe always the subject). If a predicate has an argument for some sort of
destination you have to look up its place for the predicate, and also remember that place.

Remembering a preposition for notating destination for each predicate seems simpler.

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[Ian Johnson]

Sorry, I meant to include this link in my last paragraph:
http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Semantic+categorization+of+gismu

mi'e la latro'a mu'o

[v4hn]

Hey tjerk,

On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 10:42:57AM -0700, tjerk wrote:
> A son of mine has dyslexia, and I read that languages in which each letter
> can only
> be pronounced in one way is much easier for dyslectics to read. Sounds very
> plausible.
> Finnish could help then. But lojban also.

Hm, I'm actually not sure lojban is of much help here.
Yes, audio-visual isomorphism makes reading more easy, but due
to the structure of lojban's gismu (exactly five letters including two vowels)
there are a lot of gismu which look very similar but mean entirely different
things, like dasni/dasri, festi/fetsi, ...
That again can make it much harder to read lojban.

> Does 'le pa karci' mean the car and only that, so not the cars?

{pa le karci} or {pa karci} (if a number preceeds the bridi you don't necessarily
need an article, you can think about this as {pa lo karci}) can be used for that,
an inner quantifier is not needed here.

> Why is there no article in lojban that means exactly one of something?

Because you normally don't need it. If you do, just add the number specifically.

> 2.
> Tense is also open by default in lojban. So 'mi klama le zarci' can mean I
> go to the market,
> and it can mean I went to the market, and it can mean I will go the market.
> So this is again
> more ambiguous than english. Of course there are words to specify the time,
> but why is present tense not the default?

Because you talk about the present much less often than you think you do.
English present tense is used for much more than statements about the current
state of the world.

> Minimizing guessing using context is one of
> the main goals of
> lojban, not?

Hm, lojban actually leaves quite a lot up to context. But that is not really
a bad thing. If context already gives away the sumti of e.g. {catra},
why bother to name them? If you explicitly want to override context, you
can about always use few words to do that. That's much harder in many natural languages.

> 3.
> In lojban the predicate(selbri) can be put everywhere in a sentence, except
> at the best
> place, the begin. That is the normal place for a function. And a selbri is
> a kind of
> function. 'fa' has to be used to be able to put the selbri at the begin:
> klama fa mi le
> zarci. Maybe another cmavo also works.
> Where did it go wrong? Trying to resemble the SVO structure of english?

There is no "normal place of a function", just mathematical convention.
If you prefer reverse polish notation, they belong in the end.
The functions themself don't care at all. Talking about programming:
object methods usually follow their object "object.method()". W.r.t. this
usage lojban is quite natural. .u'i

Arguably, human languages most often involve talking about objects which are
topics of discourse. That is, I talk about _something_ doing something.
That can be the first thing to mention in a sentence and the way lojban does it
(if you don't use {fa} to change that)

> 4.
> The main effect the place structure grammar of lojban seems to have is
> elimination of
> prepositions. I have my doubts about this. For example, compare 'I go to
> the market' and 'I
> talk to you'. Very different things are happening, but there is also
> similarity. There is
> a destination in both, and that is why to is used in both cases.

There is a whole class/selma'o BAI which provide something more flexible
than prepositions:

For example you can use {zau} to say {mi klama le zarci zau le patfu}:

I go to the market and-that-was-approved-by the father.

{seka'a} provides the first meaning of "to" in your example, {tecu'u} the second.
However, the bridi structure normally provides most "slots" you need
to make your utterance, so you don't have to use BAIs all of the time.
You can though, if you prefer them to extensive place structure usage
(Not everyone remembers the x4 of {mluni} for example).


mi'e la .van. mu'o

[Ian Johnson]

On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 5:40 PM, v4hn <m...@v4hn.de> wrote:

{pa le karci} or {pa karci} (if a number preceeds the bridi you don't necessarily
need an article, you can think about this as {pa lo karci}) can be used for that,
an inner quantifier is not needed here.

{pa karce} is rather unlikely to mean what you want. In particular it does *NOT* mean the same as {pa lo karce}. Instead it actually means exactly what {pa lo karce} meant before xorlo was implemented, that is "there exists exactly one car such that ..." Roughly speaking {pa lo karce} says "of the cars that we're talking about, one of them does ..." while {lo pa karce} says "there's one car that we're talking about, it does ...". Either one is fine to talk about "a car", although honestly {lo karce} is fine the extremely vast majority of the time.

[v4hn]

On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 05:49:08PM -0400, Ian Johnson wrote:
> On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 5:40 PM, v4hn <m...@v4hn.de> wrote:
> > {pa le karci} or {pa karci} (if a number preceeds the bridi you don't necessarily
> > need an article, you can think about this as {pa lo karci}) can be used
> > for that, an inner quantifier is not needed here.
>
> {pa karce} is rather unlikely to mean what you want. In particular it does
> *NOT* mean the same as {pa lo karce}. Instead it actually means exactly
> what {pa lo karce} meant before xorlo was implemented, that is "there
> exists exactly one car such that ..."

Agreed, I never use that and got confused when reading

lo with an outer quantifier, which is exactly the same thing
as just sticking a number before an item (i.e. "mu lo bakni" == "mu bakni"
== "five cows), works pretty much as before: "five things that really are cows".

at http://www.lojban.org/tiki/How+to+use+xorlo . Someone might want to rephrase that.

[Ian Johnson]

Oh wow, that's not good at all, that's completely inconsistent with the formal definition in the proposal proper...

[selpa'i]

On 21.05.2013 00:24, Ian Johnson wrote:
> On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 6:12 PM, v4hn <m...@v4hn.de> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 05:49:08PM -0400, Ian Johnson wrote:
>> > On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 5:40 PM, v4hn <m...@v4hn.de> wrote:
>> > > {pa le karci} or {pa karci} (if a number preceeds the bridi you
>> don't necessarily
>> > > need an article, you can think about this as {pa lo karci}) can
>> be used
>> > > for that, an inner quantifier is not needed here.
>> >
>> > {pa karce} is rather unlikely to mean what you want. In particular
>> it does
>> > *NOT* mean the same as {pa lo karce}. Instead it actually means
>> exactly
>> > what {pa lo karce} meant before xorlo was implemented, that is
>> "there
>> > exists exactly one car such that ..."
>>
>> Agreed, I never use that and got confused when reading
>>
>> lo with an outer quantifier, which is exactly the same thing
>> as just sticking a number before an item (i.e. "mu lo bakni" == "mu
>> bakni"
>> == "five cows), works pretty much as before: "five things that
>> really are cows".
>>

>> at http://www.lojban.org/tiki/How+to+use+xorlo [1] . Someone might

>> want to rephrase that.
>>
>> mi'e la .van. mu'o
>
> Oh wow, that's not good at all, that's completely inconsistent with
> the formal definition in the proposal proper...

That's exactly the part that got changed in December 2011, when the
sentence "When an outer quantifier is used without an inner quantifier,
''lo'' can be omitted." was removed. This means that "PA broda = PA lo
broda" *was* part of the original BPFK-approved proposal from '04. (the
recent change wasn't followed by another round of voting of course)

In any case, I don't think there is *such* a big difference between PA
broda and PA lo broda. Both make claims about instances that broda, and
neither of them select in-mind referents. It probably depends on one's
conceptualization of lo broda.

mu'o mi'e la selpa'i

[Ian Johnson]

I think it's a marked difference no matter how you think of lo and da--{lo} definitely allows for referents to be in the universe of discourse and not selected, whereas {da} does not. That is, {PA lo broda} takes exactly PA things from {lo broda}, which might be quite small compared to the whole UD worth of brodas. {PA broda} takes exactly PA things from the entire UD worth of brodas. This is already far too technical for the beginners list though.

[la gleki]

On Monday, May 20, 2013 9:42:57 PM UTC+4, tjerk wrote:

I'm interested in lojban. I hope to state complicated meanings very clearly using lojban,
and without the need for further clarifications as is common in natural languages.

A son of mine has dyslexia, and I read that languages in which each letter can only
be pronounced in one way is much easier for dyslectics to read. Sounds very plausible.

Finnish could help then. But lojban also. Further, language is really his thing. He began
to speak very young and he makes quite complicated grammatical constructions. And generally
knows the effect on meaning changing places of words have. lojban could help him to
transfer his ability in spoken language to written language. And I hope we can have some
fun together learning it.

So far for my motivation. I have some questions and remarks about lojban.

1.
'mi' in lojban means I and also we. So, here lojban is more ambiguous than english. But
lojban is supposed to be less ambiguous than english. Lojban has another 3 words for we,
meaning: me and you, you and others, me and others and not you. So 'mi' could have been
reserved for I without losing expressiveness.
I suppose this thing of lojban is because lojban leaves number open by default. 'le karci'
means the car or the cars. Does 'le pa karci' mean the car and only that, so not the cars?
If so, does 'pa mi' mean I and not we?

Why is there no article in lojban that means exactly one of something?

2.

Tense is also open by default in lojban. So 'mi klama le zarci' can mean I go to the market,
and it can mean I went to the market, and it can mean I will go the market. So this is again
more ambiguous than english. Of course there are words to specify the time, but why is

present tense not the default? Minimizing guessing using context is one of the main goals of
lojban, not?

Well, the fact is that many languages have no default tense or number.

Lojban fully follows the principle of facultative precision: the fewer words you say, the more vague your speech becomes.

Languages that are very precise are probably impossible to speak. Nobody needs a language that forces you to always pay attention to tiny details.

E.g. speakers of Chinese often wonder why English burdens the speakers with so many tiny details that you *HAVE* to express:

I've been going to the market.

I will have gone to the market

...

and so on.

So no, minimising guessing is not the goal of lojban or any sane language.

What is really powerful in Lojban is that you MAY (in accordance with your desire) increase or decrease the precision of your speech to the level that you need exactly in this case.

In Chinese there is no default tense and most of the time Chinese speakers use no tense at all! A billion people speak this and find no problems!

But if you want to talk like in English you may add additional markers:

ca = present tense

ca'o = continuous

ba'o = perfect

and so on.

Now look at the sentence: "In this picture the author has shown how three girls are going to the library". Now in what tense should we put the verb "to go"?

When they were going to the library? At the moment when the author drew the picture. At the moment when the author had watch real girls in real world going to the library? Or may be they are going when *you* are watching the picture?

In fact making "present" the default tense here would be incorrect.

As for numbers

a. You can say that {karce} is a verb that means "to be a car".

b. Then {le} or {lo} transforms this verb into a noun.

c. Next you add a number and specify the number using e.g. {pa}: {lo pa karce} = one car.

Actually Chinese has no numbers by default!

Of course as Lojban is a universal language it is able to reflect features of other languages. Isn't that great?

The same for {mi}. If you have an alternating personality what would you describe yourself? Is it {pa mi} or {za'u mi} (i.e. in plural)?

Isn't it better just to say {mi}? So such vague meaning of mi is highly useful and can be made more precise on demand using additional words.

3.
In lojban the predicate(selbri) can be put everywhere in a sentence, except at the best
place, the begin. That is the normal place for a function. And a selbri is a kind of
function. 'fa' has to be used to be able to put the selbri at the begin: klama fa mi le
zarci. Maybe another cmavo also works.
Where did it go wrong? Trying to resemble the SVO structure of english?

Yes,  trying to resemble the structure of most spoken languages in the world including English and Chinese.

However, if the language that you love has VSO or any other structure you are welcome to always use FA.

4.
The main effect the place structure grammar of lojban seems to have is elimination of
prepositions. I have my doubts about this. For example, compare 'I go to the market' and 'I
talk to you'. Very different things are happening, but there is also similarity. There is
a destination in both, and that is why to is used in both cases.

Yes, there is similarity  but in *English*.  E.g. in Russian instead of "talk to somebody" we say "talk with somebody".

So which language should we try to emulate? Isn't it better to translate the meaning of the text and not individual words?

However, there is indeed similarity between those two meanings of the word "to".

This is a metaphor. Talk is about transmitting information in words.

Going is about moving physical objects like your own body.

You can talk metaphorically in lojban to reproduce features of specific languages.

In this case you might want to use {fa'a} (towards) of {ka'a} of {tebe'i}. Also  you would probably want to add {pe'a} maker to indicte that the sentence is metaphorical.

In the place structure grammar of lojban a place has no meaning on its own (although 1st
place is maybe always the subject). If a predicate has an argument for some sort of
destination you have to look up its place for the predicate, and also remember that place.

Remembering a preposition for notating destination for each predicate seems simpler.

Given that such prepositions are rather arbitrary in different language it might appear to be even harder.

mu'o

[Robert LeChevalier]

selpa'i wrote:
> That's exactly the part that got changed in December 2011, when the
> sentence "When an outer quantifier is used without an inner quantifier,
> ''lo'' can be omitted." was removed. This means that "PA broda = PA lo
> broda" *was* part of the original BPFK-approved proposal from '04. (the
> recent change wasn't followed by another round of voting of course)

Who had the authority to make such a change?

If it isn't voted on, the change is not official, and as you can see,
people won't understand what you mean. That is WHY it is supposed to be
hard to make changes, and why they are supposed to be strictly controlled.

> In any case, I don't think there is *such* a big difference between PA
> broda and PA lo broda.

In the original system, there was a logical difference but not much
practical difference.

lojbab

[selpa'i]

On 21.05.2013 13:25, Robert LeChevalier wrote:
> selpa'i wrote:
>> That's exactly the part that got changed in December 2011, when the
>> sentence "When an outer quantifier is used without an inner
>> quantifier,
>> ''lo'' can be omitted." was removed. This means that "PA broda = PA
>> lo
>> broda" *was* part of the original BPFK-approved proposal from '04.
>> (the
>> recent change wasn't followed by another round of voting of course)
>
> Who had the authority to make such a change?

xorxes made that change after being asked to do so. I think PC was
complaining.

> If it isn't voted on, the change is not official, and as you can see,
> people won't understand what you mean. That is WHY it is supposed to
> be hard to make changes, and why they are supposed to be strictly
> controlled.

Of course, but there is no institution left to vote on such things
right now, is there?

Here is a relevant thread from right after the change was made:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/lojban/XutjWBUhPMY

Please continue this discussion on the main list, if interested. It's
not suited to the beginners' list in my opinion.

[Jonathan Jones]

On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 7:55 AM, selpa'i <m...@plasmatix.com> wrote:

On 21.05.2013 13:25, Robert LeChevalier wrote:

selpa'i wrote:

That's exactly the part that got changed in December 2011, when the
sentence "When an outer quantifier is used without an inner quantifier,
''lo'' can be omitted." was removed. This means that "PA broda = PA lo
broda" *was* part of the original BPFK-approved proposal from '04. (the
recent change wasn't followed by another round of voting of course)

Who had the authority to make such a change?

xorxes made that change after being asked to do so. I think PC was complaining.

If it isn't voted on, the change is not official, and as you can see,
people won't understand what you mean. That is WHY it is supposed to
be hard to make changes, and why they are supposed to be strictly
controlled.

Of course, but there is no institution left to vote on such things right now, is there?

Yes, there is. It's called the BPFK. https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/bpfk-list

It's the institution created by the Logical Language Group (LLG) specifically for the management of the language. Its primary tasks are to document the language as completely as possible, and vote on proposed changes to the language.

There is also currently a freeze on any language changes until the language as it is right now is finished being documented. Doing the actual documenting isn't particularly difficult, but neither is it exciting or glamorous. Anyone with half an interest and some free time can help, everything one needs to know to assist is here.

Whether or not this discussion belongs in the Beginner's list, obviously the above information does, since what should be common knowledge apparently isn't.

 

Here is a relevant thread from right after the change was made: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/lojban/XutjWBUhPMY

Please continue this discussion on the main list, if interested. It's not suited to the beginners' list in my opinion.

mu'o mi'e la selpa'i

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mu'o mi'e .aionys.

.i.e'ucai ko cmima lo pilno be denpa bu .i doi.luk. mi patfu do zo'o
(Come to the Dot Side! Luke, I am your father. :D )

[Robert LeChevalier]

selpa'i wrote:
> On 21.05.2013 13:25, Robert LeChevalier wrote:
>> selpa'i wrote:
>>> That's exactly the part that got changed in December 2011, when the
>>> sentence "When an outer quantifier is used without an inner quantifier,
>>> ''lo'' can be omitted." was removed. This means that "PA broda = PA lo
>>> broda" *was* part of the original BPFK-approved proposal from '04. (the
>>> recent change wasn't followed by another round of voting of course)
>>
>> Who had the authority to make such a change?
>
> xorxes made that change after being asked to do so. I think PC was
> complaining.
>
>> If it isn't voted on, the change is not official, and as you can see,
>> people won't understand what you mean. That is WHY it is supposed to
>> be hard to make changes, and why they are supposed to be strictly
>> controlled.
>
> Of course, but there is no institution left to vote on such things right
> now, is there?

byfy still exists, but Robin as "jatna" asserted dictatorial power for
the time being. Of course after so many years, the exact current
membership of byfy if there was to be a vote might have to be decided,
but that also would be up to Robin.

lojbab

[tjerk]

Op maandag 20 mei 2013 23:40:48 UTC+2 schreef v4hn het volgende:

Hey tjerk,

Hi v4hn

 

On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 10:42:57AM -0700, tjerk wrote:
> A son of mine has dyslexia, and I read that languages in which each letter
> can only
> be pronounced in one way is much easier for dyslectics to read. Sounds very
> plausible.
> Finnish could help then. But lojban also.

Hm, I'm actually not sure lojban is of much help here.
Yes, audio-visual isomorphism makes reading more easy, but due
to the structure of lojban's gismu (exactly five letters including two vowels)
there are a lot of gismu which look very similar but mean entirely different
things, like dasni/dasri, festi/fetsi, ...
That again can make it much harder to read lojban.

The finnish language (Finland) has audio-visual isomorphism. I read that there are almost no dyslectics in Finland, because of this. I suppose finnish too has words that look alike.

English is worst in mapping text to sound. And that is the explanation for that the USA and the UK have to highest percentages of dyslectics. Dutch, my native language, is somewhere in between.

But I don't really know all this, it just sounds plausible to me. In lojban you can move your eyes from the left to the right and in the same rythm and speed as the letters appear speak.

In the end is not handy compared to at the begin. When you first read the predicate, after that you can then map each argument to its meaning in the sentence immediately when you read that argument.

When the predicate comes last, you have to keep a mental book keeping of all the arguments, the positions or order, first, and only when, at last, you read the predicate, then you can map to their meaning in the sentence. It takes more mental resources.

 

The functions themself don't care at all. Talking about programming:
object methods usually follow their object "object.method()". W.r.t. this
usage lojban is quite natural. .u'i

Lojban resembles functional programming more than object oriented programming. The predicate is central, and that is a function.

A language that would resemble object oriented programming more, would put nouns central. Part of the definition of a noun would be the possible predicate relations it could have (methods). It would have a taxonomy of its nouns (inheritance relations). 

 

Arguably, human languages most often involve talking about objects which are
topics of discourse. That is, I talk about _something_ doing something.
That can be the first thing to mention in a sentence and the way lojban does it
(if you don't use {fa} to change that)

> 4.
> The main effect the place structure grammar of lojban seems to have is
> elimination of
> prepositions. I have my doubts about this. For example, compare 'I go to
> the market' and 'I
> talk to you'. Very different things are happening, but there is also
> similarity. There is
> a destination in both, and that is why to is used in both cases.

There is a whole class/selma'o BAI which provide something more flexible
than prepositions:

Nice.

[v4hn]

On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 01:21:33PM -0700, tjerk wrote:
> Op maandag 20 mei 2013 23:40:48 UTC+2 schreef v4hn het volgende:

> > There is no "normal place of a function", just mathematical convention.
> > If you prefer reverse polish notation, they belong in the end.
>
> In the end is not handy compared to at the begin.

Not in lojban, right.
I just wanted to point out that mathematics doesn't care.

> > Talking about programming:
> > object methods usually follow their object "object.method()". W.r.t. this
> > usage lojban is quite natural. .u'i
>
> Lojban resembles functional programming more than object oriented
> programming. The predicate is central, and that is a function.

It resembles neither. It's a language used for communication,
not for computation and comparisons to programming languages are all
invalid anyway in my opinion. Natural discourses usually have topics/focused
objects and those normally go in front in lojban. If you're a lisp programmer
and prefer prefix notation to everything else, you can do that by appending
{fa} to all of your bridi. Would be an interesting style of lojban to read.

[stormi]

> > Talking about programming: 
> > object methods usually follow their object "object.method()". W.r.t. this 
> > usage lojban is quite natural. .u'i 
> 
> Lojban resembles functional programming more than object oriented 
> programming. The predicate is central, and that is a function. 

I disagree, it resembles objected oriented programming rather strongly.

Namely in that the first place is almost always the "do-er."

In {mi klama} I am the one "going" (adam.klama()). I am the one performing the action.
{lo karce blabi}, the car is the thing that is white (lo_karce.blabi() would return true)

[Jonathan Jones]

Not only is that a rather weak argument, but as the sole argument for OOP-ness, it's completely insufficient.

brivla are not objects, they are functions. The fact that the first argument of the function typically comes before the function call itself, as in the case of {mi klama}, is irrelevant.

{mi klama lo zarci lo zdani lo dargu lo karce} is not "mi.klama( lo zarci , lo zdani , lo dargu , lo karce )", it is "klama( mi , lo zarci , lo zdani , lo dargu , lo karce )".

[v4hn]

On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 03:02:54PM -0600, Jonathan Jones wrote:
> On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 2:32 PM, stormi <chevali...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Lojban resembles functional programming more than object oriented
> > > programming. The predicate is central, and that is a function.
> >
> > I disagree, it resembles objected oriented programming rather strongly.
> > Namely in that the first place is almost always the "do-er."

> > [...]

>
> brivla are not objects, they are functions. The fact that the first
> argument of the function typically comes before the function call itself,
> as in the case of {mi klama}, is irrelevant.
>
> {mi klama lo zarci lo zdani lo dargu lo karce} is not "mi.klama( lo zarci ,
> lo zdani , lo dargu , lo karce )", it is "klama( mi , lo zarci , lo zdani ,
> lo dargu , lo karce )".

It is neither and you're "argument", that is to say you're opinion,
isn't any stronger.

Did I mention that these comparisons pe'i
are all invalid and irrational?


mu'o

[Jonathan Jones]

*your

And it's not an opinion. It's an analogy, as predicate logic and functional programming are very similar in this regard: they both are composed of functions which take a number of arguments.

 

Did I mention that these comparisons pe'i
are all invalid and irrational?


mu'o

[v4hn]

On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 04:38:42PM -0600, Jonathan Jones wrote:
> On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 3:33 PM, v4hn <m...@v4hn.de> wrote:
> > It is neither and you're "argument", that is to say you're opinion,
> > isn't any stronger.
>
> *your

.ua .e'enai je'e .i mi mutce tatpi ca le cabdei vau za'a

> And it's not an opinion. It's an analogy,

So is the object analogy.

> as predicate logic and functional
> programming are very similar in this regard: they both are composed of
> functions which take a number of arguments.

Good thing lojban is not predicate logic then, right?
Ever tried to say "coi" in first order logic?

The perspective you describe is just that: a perspective.
I like it, but still you shouldn't walk around telling people
with different perspectives they got it all wrong.

Looking at "p(a)" people see vastly different things:
- A function/functor application mapping an element a to
a truth value
- A property of an object a which might be part of
a large taxonomy of objects that might have that property
- A node in some semantic ontology
- A plain and simple statement
- ...

Not to speak of different philosophical perspectives on propositions.

None of these are wrong. Maybe some are "better" for you,
but that might be due to your use cases.

> > Did I mention that these comparisons pe'i
> > are all invalid and irrational?

.i mi ckakla .i a'o do se xamgu

[.arpis.]

Not only have we strayed far from the original topic, but this is not really relevant to the beginners list.

--
mu'o mi'e .arpis.