From opoudjis@optushome.com.au Thu Nov 07 19:22:50 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: opoudjis@optushome.com.au X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_2_3_0); 8 Nov 2002 03:22:50 -0000 Received: (qmail 93470 invoked from network); 8 Nov 2002 03:22:49 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.218) by m10.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 8 Nov 2002 03:22:49 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO aquila.its.unimelb.EDU.AU) (128.250.20.111) by mta3.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 8 Nov 2002 03:22:49 -0000 Received: from CONVERSION-DAEMON by SMTP.UNIMELB.EDU.AU (PMDF V5.2-29 #46888) id <01KOMMOLF7KG91GXFE@SMTP.UNIMELB.EDU.AU> for lojban@yahoogroups.com; Fri, 8 Nov 2002 14:22:46 +1100 Received: from [128.250.86.21] (porchermac.language.unimelb.edu.au [128.250.86.21]) by SMTP.UNIMELB.EDU.AU (PMDF V5.2-29 #46888) with ESMTP id <01KOMMOJMMZ891HB21@SMTP.UNIMELB.EDU.AU> for lojban@yahoogroups.com; Fri, 08 Nov 2002 14:22:45 +1100 Date: Fri, 08 Nov 2002 14:21:19 +1100 Subject: rono X-Sender: opoudjis@mail.optushome.com.au To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" From: Nick Nicholas X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=90350612 X-Yahoo-Profile: opoudjis Folks, I haven't been following, and am unlikely to follow the debate on importing and {ro}. Am I right in saying that this boils down to whether {ro} entails {su'o}, and therefore {rono broda} should be statable or not? If so, then I vote for whatever allows {rono}. Because {rono} is cool, and matches what I've internalised. I would see "All 20th Dalai Lamas play foosball" to be either vacuously true or (at most) metalinguistically false, but not literally false. Aplying the Grice Salvator [see wiki], I am quite happy for ro => su'opa to be an implicature. The point of Lojban as far as I can tell is primarily that it be formal, not that it be anchored to the prevalent logical paradigm. If it is possible for Lojban to be internally consistent and allow {ro} to apply to the empty universe, then the fact that prevalent logics don't allow that is not decisive to me. It is enough to me that a possible logic does allow it. It would be nice if Lojban was Standard Logical rather than Natlang, but in this case the Third is not excluded: if you tell me that maths uses {ro} = {rono}, then I say that's legitimation enough. If ro allows rono and that ro destroys logic, we get the logical ro back with rosu'o. This might make a hash of any one-to-one mapping between existential and universal quantification, but I regard it as just a minor nuisance. Btw, in case anyone was interested, I do not believe the issues currently being discussed here are to be resolved in the dictionary. The discussion of {lo'e} that has just petered out on jboske is, but the scoping and entailments of {ro}, IMO, are not. That's not lexical; that's grammar and logic. -- **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** * Dr Nick Nicholas, French & Italian Studies nickn@unimelb.edu.au * University of Melbourne, Australia http://www.opoudjis.net * "Eschewing obfuscatory verbosity of locutional rendering, the * circumscriptional appelations are excised." --- W. Mann & S. Thompson, * _Rhetorical Structure Theory: A Theory of Text Organisation_, 1987. * **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** ****