Re: Changing worldviews with language (LONG)

Harald Stoiber scripsit:

> With the location description "at the restaurant" we have two
> distinct ways to represent this information. First we could of course
> expand our freshly defined predicate "eat", thus: eat(x,y,z) - whereas
> "z" is the location where the eating takes place. Viewing it this way,
> a preposition adds to the valency of the verb.
Lojban:  mi cidja loi cidrpitsa ne'i le gusta
        I eat some pizza within the restaurant

The "ne'i" adds a third argument to the predicate "cidja", eat.

> at(eat,restaurant)(I,pizza)
I think rather "at(eat(I,pizza),restaurant)", which in Lojban is:

le nu mi cidja loi cidrpitsa kei nenri le gusta
the event-of( I eat some pizza ) is-within the restaurant

The family resemblance between "nenri" and "ne'i" is of course no accident,
though not fully systematic either.

> If we wanted a most universal and generic language with a lexicon
> full of concepts, then why restrict those concepts by any pre-defined
> valency?
Google for "Voksigid".

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