From jlk@xxxxxx.xxxx Sat Apr 17 19:18:10 1999 X-Digest-Num: 117 Message-ID: <44114.117.641.959273824@eGroups.com> Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1999 19:18:10 -0700 (PDT) From: Gerald Koenig >From: "=?us-ascii?Q?Jorge_J._Llamb=EDas?=" > >la robin cusku di'e > >>If this is the case, then both the cmavo list and the reference grammar are >>seriously misleading. I took it as more like "There is a set of boxes >containing >>at least one member, and I need at least one member of that set." I won't >>comment on the symbolic representation or suggest alternatives, since my >>predicate logic ain't what it used to be. > >You can't use the usual symbolic representation for that if by "need" >you mean "x1 needs object x2". Allowing for events, you can put it >into some form like: >There is a set of boxes B and Need(I, (Ex x belongs to B & Have(I,x) ) >but this is definitely not {mi nitcu lo tanxe}, it is >{mi nitcu le nu mi ponse lo tanxe}. > >>> I meant the logical expression above, which is undoubtedly >>> what the Lojban means. >> >>Undoubtedly? If there were no doubt, the whole le/lo problem would never >have >>arisen in the first place. > Jorge said: >Well, if there is any doubt that {mi nitcu lo tanxe} means Ex T(x) & >N(mi,x), >then I have no idea how {lo} works. This should be valid for any predicate, >not just {nitcu} and {tanxe}. Besides, the reference from the Book that >SwifRain posted confirms it. Hi Jorge, Seeing this example that we kicked around so many times years ago surface again gave me so much nostalgia that I have to return to the lojban list for a moment to comment on it. >From the gismu list the x2 of nitcu is "necessity". "Necessity" is a noun, it is defined by Webster as (1) quality or state of being necessary; (2) Something necessary. "Quality" and "state" are also nouns. So if the definition is to be followed, only a noun or equivalent phrase can be put in x2. I agree as always that "lo tanxe" means E(x) T(x) where the x referred to is the same in each form, ie the scope of x is the sentence. So we have: mi nitcu E(x) T(x). We have put a full predication, a compound sentence, in a slot calling for a noun. It's not going to work. Since I moved on from lojban I wrote a set of modals (need is a modal) for NGL. I got around the problem by requiring that the modal take a proposition in all cases as grammatical object, never a noun. I _think_ that to do that in lojban the object proposition in x2 would have to be declared with bu'a, but I've forgotten a lot. In any case, to predicate about a proposition is a second order claim. Que le vaya bien, djer , djer >> I said that however confident people may >>be about Esperanto, Interlingua, Occidental or whatever, I for one would >prefer >>Lojban to grow comparitively slowly for a while, so that we have time to >sort out >>glitches, especially in the pragmatics of the language. These questions >about >>articles were what I had in mind at the time. > >Yes, it would be interesting, for example, to get a list of all the usage >that {lo'e} >has seen so far. A good chunk of it would be my own usage, as I'm trying to >describe it here, but seeing if and how other people use it can give us >better >ideas than trying to make up examples. > >>Oh well, look on the bright side - nobody has _ever_ managed to come up >with a >>satisfactory explanation of English articles! > >Not even in Esperanto, which has only one article, is the usage fully >explained, >but of course in that case it is based on the usage of other languages. We >should >at least try to sort it out in Lojban though. > >co'o mi'e xorxes