RE: [jboske] The two faces of tu'o (was: Nick on propositionalism &c. (was: Digest Number 134))

["And Rosta" <a.rosta@lycos.co.uk>]

Lojbab:
> At 12:58 AM 1/13/03 +0000, And Rosta wrote:
> >Lojbab:
> > > >in the sense that in certain contexts a speaker who says
> > > >{zi'o catra ko'a} may be interpreted as communicating {zo'e catra
> > > >zi'o}
> > >
> > > I don't understand either an agentless killing of someone, or a agentive
> > > killing where no one is slain, so neither of these communicates
> > > anything to me
> > >
> > > "zi'o catra ko'a" != "ko'a mrobi'o"
> >
> >Why not? Or at least, why would the former not be understood as
> >the latter?
> 
> It might be understood as the latter, but the former is claiming a catra 
> relationship between a agent and a victim except that there is no 
> agent. 

So if there's no agent then it's not a catra relationship. It's
a se catra be zi'o property. Take a relationship between an agent 
and an undergoer -- a dier. Delete the agent. You now have a
property involving an undergoer -- a dier. I would hope that you
see what a property involving a dier might mean, but if you
don't then hopefully _Lojban for Beginners_ or _Lojban for
Intermediates_ will help you, once they're written. (I don't
know whether the level 0 book treats zi'o or not, or if it 
does, whether it treats it in sufficient depth for you to 
grock it.)

> The latter claims that someone became dead, and implies no catra 
> relationship 

Quite so. Neither implies a catra relationship.

> > > >But secondly and more importantly, what grounds are there for
> > > >saying that there is exactly one du'u broda? Do we know what criteria
> > > >we can use to tell that there is one and not two? No, we don't
> > >
> > > As Cowan says in another post, the quantifier is a distinction without a
> > > difference. It doesn't matter how many du'u broda there are since the
> > > number of du'u broda has no relevance to anything
> >
> >Why would you want to claim that there is only one, then?
> 
> Why do you want to say mrobi'o as zi'o catra?
>
> Either there is no reason, or the reason has to do with some sort of 
> personal mental process that generates that particular expression 

Fair enough. But in jboske we try to deal only with reasoned reasons
for saying things. That doesn't mean that you mustn't say things
for unreasoned reasons. It means only that to talk about it on
Jboske is a timewasting nuisance.

> > > I doubt that byfy needs to rule on what "pai broda" means
> >
> >It depends. Supposing the current state of discussion of the gadri
> >system to be the final prescription, then one could deduce from that
> >that "pai broda" would be meaningless. But I am confident you could
> >find a way to argue that the deduction wasn't sanctioned by the
> >prescription and was therefore invalid 
> 
> But someone may want to say
> 
> "[pai -diameters of circle X] cu dunli [pa -circumference of circle X] 
> [leni cu'e clani-when-conjoined]"
> 
> or something like that 
> 
> I don't want to say it, and might find a better way to express the 
> underlying idea id it wasn't 4AM, but I can certainly imagine someone 
> trying it. (I hope it doesn't break someone's solution, and please don't 
> ask me to come up with an example using ka'o as a quantifier %^)

On the hypothetical assumptions made above (such that it could be
deduced that "pai broda" is meaningless), the person who wants to
say "pai diameters..." would be frustrated in their wish, since
their sentence would not mean what they intended it to.

I should add that I'm not actuall advocating that "pai broda"
should be meaningless. If there's a way to make it meaningful
without breaking anything else, then that'd be preferable.
Indeed, I had thought of a way of adapting 4th Excellent
Solution so as to make it meaningful.

--And.