Re: cliva

[cbmvax!uunet!MATH.UCLA.EDU!pucc.PRINCETON.EDU!jimc]

Lojbab writes:
> You fire a gun into the air.  The bullet leaves the chamber.  Where is
> it 'going to'?  Nowhere in particular.

Hmmm, if you trace the trajectory it does in fact hit something
eventually.  Similarly for a drunk leaving a party by car :-).  Only in
some cosmic cases is there really never any end point, and this only if
you believe in an infinite universe and a rather extreme definition of
"never".  Lojbab distinguishes between a relation of (mover, origin)
versus (mover, destination, origin), saying that there are essentially
different meanings and claims.  Whereas I see the first alternative to
be (mover, zo'e, origin) in which the speaker merely omits a
destination which nonetheless necessarily exists.  Thus I see cliva as
a synonym of klama with zo'e provided for free.  Similarly for several
other word sets that differ only in which places are omitted.

Should my view be adopted, I would see this as a strong argument to
cancel the gismu status of cliva and similar synonyms.  A major
attraction of Lojban is that the gismu list is short, and it doesn't
need these extras.

In hard science we could appeal to observation: start tracing
trajectories and see if any are endless (to the end of time, remember,
after all the stars explode or burn out).  But this argument is
philosophical.  How could it be resolved?

                -- jimc