Re: fuzzy bears

[And Rosta <a.rosta@UCLAN.AC.UK>]

Steven:
> I believe that natlangs are fuzzy, and I am pleased to know that lojban is
> also fuzzy, as made explicit here in the grammer. With that in mind, I
> propose a formalism for statements where explicit fuzziness is required,
> which would be simpler than using <jei> or <ja'axi>. This formalism would
> appear to require no change in the grammer, nor any cmavo other than a
> lojban number:
>
> <lo vofi'uze cribe pu finti le lisri>
>
> "One or more of the things which are fuzzily 4/7  really bears creates the
> story."

This means that only 4/7 of a bear exists: all beardom amounts to
no more than 4/7 of an individual bear.

You get the meaning you want you must change to:

 <lo ja`a xi vofi'uze cribe pu finti le lisri>

> <lo so'e cribe pu finti le lisri>
>
> "One or more of the things which are mostly bearish creates the story."

The lojban is nonsensical.
Again, you need to add {ja`a xi} before {so`e}.

> <le so'a cribe pu finti le lisri>
>
> "One or more specific things each of which I describe as being almost
> entirely bearish creates the story."

same as above

> <vofi'uze cribe> could have many meanings, of course.
>
> It could mean the remaining 400 pounds of bear carcass after a cougar has
> eaten the other 300 pounds, for example, although that would not be a very
> useful interpretation most of the time.

We haven't yet concluded the lapsed thread on countability. But
at any rate, <vofi'uze cribe> almost certainly means 4/7 of a
single bear.

> But it would appear that at least
> one meaning would be a fuzzy set description of a somewhat bearish thing.

I reckon not.

> It is already clear that one can say:
>
> le ci cribe pu finti le lisri
>
> "The three bears wrote the book."
>
> The semantic space of fractional bears are unassigned in the grammer;
> describing something as a fractional bear would appear to be grammatically
> correct but meaningless.

But what about the things that quite clearly are fractionable?
We all agree what half an apple is, for example. Or half a dollar.

> My proposal fills this semantic space of what a
> fractional bear is by building on the already acknowledged fuzziness of
> lojban utterances and setting a convention by which fractions between 0 and
> 1 when applied to a gismu (for example) are making explicit the fuzzy
> extent of that gismu.

There already exists a method of doing what you want, with ja`a xi,
and it has the virtue of not being limited to sumti, which your
proposal is.

> Although some consider my conceptualization of objects to
> be eccentric, I believe this view more accurately reflects reality than the
> artificial contrivance of an arbitrary threshold above which persons are
> diabetic and below which they are not.

I agree with you on the absence of definite boundaries, but I am not
sure whether we could ever agree on meaningful scales of x-ness.
Rather, {ja`a} means "above a contextually relevant threshold"
and {na} means "below a contextually relevant threshold".

If you really care so much about making fuzz explicit, then I
suggest using ja`a xi all the time. Lojban has been designed with
certain prejudices making somethings shortwinded and other things
longwinded. But it is the responsibilitity of the the users to
ignore this, and be exactly as longwinded as we need to be.
This would make it apparent where the prejudices in the design
erred in making the wrong things longwinded and shortwinded.
Then, once enough people get fed up of having to be so longwinded,
then there'll be enough of a mood for change, and profligately
wasted cmavo can be reassigned to better uses for things it
takes too long to say.

--shawthaw meethair and