Arguments of verbs of motion (and other multi-place predicates, really)

["61510::GILSON" <cbmvax!uunet!pucc.princeton.edu!gilson!61510.decnet>]

And Rosta <ucleaar%UCL.AC.UK@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU> writes:

>rAtZAnkauEnNo_ZU (John Cowan writes:)
>>
>>la .and. rostas. cusku di'e
>>
>>> This is undeniably long-winded, but I wish to make the point that these
>>> are the only necessary arguments. I disagree with John Cowan (I think it
>>> was) and lojban in that I don't believe there is such a thing as motion
>>> without a destination, as distinct from motion without *specified*
>>> destination.
>>
>>The point is that Lojban calls that kind of motion "litru", and of course
>>such a path may be closed, without beginning or end (example: the Earth's
>>orbit around the Sun).  "klama", on the other hand, describes the kind of
>>motion that does have a beginning and an end, whether or not specified
>>by the speaker.  So "klama" vs. "litru" makes a semantic contrast:  "motion
>>over a path with beginning and end (and a means)" vs. "motion over a path
>>possibly without a beginning or an end (with a means)".

>I understand the reasoning, but I question the need for the additional
>predicate. Before explaining precisely why, let me suggest for consideration
>a general principle constructed languages might adhere to:
>    To express a compositional meaning, it is preferable for the
>    lexicalization of the meaning to be compositional. For example,
>    _kill_ and _die_ according to Lojban principles might well belong
>    to different lexemes (as in English), because they have distinct
>    argument structures, but the sense of _kill_ is composed of "cause
>    to die", so my principle advocates not having a word _kill_, but
>    instead using _cause to die_.
>This principle is why I don't just say "so what" when I see distinct
>lexemes for _klama_ and _litru_.
>
>In my previous message I suggested that going really only has two arguments:
>theme and location/path. How does this square with John's examples? I think
>that in the orbiting example the path is not delimited (in the way that
>the referent of a mass noun, or of a verb in imperfective aspect is not
>delimited).

I think And's arguments make sense to me. However, the argument may be made that
Lojban has already a pretty-hard-set gismu list. Perhaps, if I don't get hooted
out of the list for suggesting it, we need to consider two versions of Lojban,
one incorporating And's guidelines and one with all these alternative gismu
that really express the same idea but with additional places in the relationship
for one as opposed to the other. These would be, according to Bob, the same
language (at least as much the same as JCB's Loglan and LLG's Lojban are!) but
I am probably going to draw flak here for trying to fragment the Lojban
community.

                                                         Bruce