Received: from mail-vx0-f189.google.com ([209.85.220.189]:37946) by stodi.digitalkingdom.org with esmtps (TLSv1:RC4-SHA:128) (Exim 4.76) (envelope-from ) id 1RRZVm-0003Re-8K; Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:14:39 -0800 Received: by vcbfk1 with SMTP id fk1sf4432015vcb.16 for ; Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:14:23 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=x-beenthere:received-spf:x-ct-class:x-ct-score:x-ct-refid:x-ct-spam :x-authority-analysis:x-cm-score:message-id:date:from:organization :user-agent:x-accept-language:mime-version:to:subject:references :in-reply-to:x-original-sender:x-original-authentication-results :reply-to:precedence:mailing-list:list-id:x-google-group-id :list-post:list-help:list-archive:sender:list-subscribe :list-unsubscribe:content-type; bh=fiVsln3WASZy66ibtnhg3V6KL45+UVbRvELPLBsaGhw=; b=ebC4kIxcPXgXxBFpEt1Qc1xo5seAPvTTK3piTy/7EJXRjNIv+hqioqOeVMASeOceD1 7xNY2jKROVizucM6g7JAP8TO58aQuctQmHtV9MJD9nJFO+D8bUuhME0DfNWy51h3rvpG kZaZD0CT42a535Q6vTmCczlqE5NlW9XxqKDFk= Received: by 10.52.33.171 with SMTP id s11mr2638882vdi.4.1321665261436; Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:14:21 -0800 (PST) X-BeenThere: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.220.149.17 with SMTP id r17ls6260070vcv.0.gmail; Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:14:19 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.52.30.195 with SMTP id u3mr7886175vdh.3.1321665259927; Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:14:19 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.52.30.195 with SMTP id u3mr7886173vdh.3.1321665259913; Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:14:19 -0800 (PST) Received: from eastrmfepo102.cox.net (eastrmfepo102.cox.net. [68.230.241.214]) by gmr-mx.google.com with ESMTP id bu17si1221100vdc.0.2011.11.18.17.14.19; Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:14:19 -0800 (PST) Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 68.230.241.214 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of lojbab@lojban.org) client-ip=68.230.241.214; Received: from eastrmimpo305.cox.net ([68.230.241.237]) by eastrmfepo102.cox.net (InterMail vM.8.01.04.00 201-2260-137-20101110) with ESMTP id <20111119011419.HYIM3177.eastrmfepo102.cox.net@eastrmimpo305.cox.net> for ; Fri, 18 Nov 2011 20:14:19 -0500 Received: from [192.168.0.100] ([70.187.237.100]) by eastrmimpo305.cox.net with bizsmtp id ypEF1h00H2AfMYu02pEFQb; Fri, 18 Nov 2011 20:14:18 -0500 X-CT-Class: Clean X-CT-Score: 0.00 X-CT-RefID: str=0001.0A020205.4EC702EA.00C9,ss=1,re=0.000,fgs=0 X-CT-Spam: 0 X-Authority-Analysis: v=1.1 cv=hgVe+80/5MJh+KE4o1dJmFHaSAHMlRzcFfmfFruTitY= c=1 sm=1 a=dYDkaTZZu5wA:10 a=LNyRDDSfcIoA:10 a=xmHE3fpoGJwA:10 a=8nJEP1OIZ-IA:10 a=MQZuvjT3xUZLKv0gclfWMg==:17 a=8YJikuA2AAAA:8 a=iaZU3DmUuvfqumggia0A:9 a=tfL5-SM8ztf7jEaE788A:7 a=wPNLvfGTeEIA:10 a=dxBpO5_FDU0A:10 a=fdrHgvXAtcAZL5HC:21 a=5GyeIB-px4Bkk_DD:21 a=MQZuvjT3xUZLKv0gclfWMg==:117 X-CM-Score: 0.00 Message-ID: <4EC702E8.1000004@lojban.org> Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2011 20:14:16 -0500 From: "Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG" Organization: The Logical Language Group, Inc. User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 (Windows/20050923) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Lions and levels and the like References: <1321501066.64722.YahooMailRC@web81306.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

<1321633769.30584.YahooMailRC@web81303.mail.mud.yahoo.com> In-Reply-To: <1321633769.30584.YahooMailRC@web81303.mail.mud.yahoo.com> X-Original-Sender: lojbab@lojban.org X-Original-Authentication-Results: gmr-mx.google.com; spf=neutral (google.com: 68.230.241.214 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of lojbab@lojban.org) smtp.mail=lojbab@lojban.org Reply-To: lojban@googlegroups.com Precedence: list Mailing-list: list lojban@googlegroups.com; contact lojban+owners@googlegroups.com List-ID: X-Google-Group-Id: 1004133512417 List-Post: , List-Help: , List-Archive: Sender: lojban@googlegroups.com List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed X-Spam-Score: -0.0 (/) X-Spam_score: -0.0 X-Spam_score_int: 0 X-Spam_bar: / John E Clifford wrote: > JCB had at least one course in Logic but in a school that did not favor modal > logic at all. I don't know how well he did in even that one (Lojbab does not > improve the logic input much). Actually, I had less than JCB and probably did worse. I had only one 13-week logic course, which I would have flunked if the instructor had been rigid. He let me have an incomplete, and I got my grade up to a D after 2 more months. Even that says very little. It was a mastery course, so getting a D meant that I completed only something like 60-70% of the modules and never was even exposed to the rest. For what I did cover, I had the mechanics down (though I forgot them within a few months), but the abstract concepts never really sunk in. And nothing in the course, even the part I did not cover, likely dealt with the stuff that comes up here, though I thought I followed your explanations in our correspondence and occasional discussions back in the 80s when this stuff was created in Lojban. (Nora, a math major, also only had one class, but did very well in it, so her advisor suggested that she take philosophy instead of a second class.) Bearing my ignorance in mind, I contribute the following based on what I thought I understood 20 years ago. > But in 56 years, the efforts to get necessity > operators in have come to naught -- though eventually we got something like a > necessity predicate, Hey - I added what pc said we needed %^) I don't recall that JCB at the time even had the CAhA family, but rather that I added it because of a discussion pc provided explaining about "timeless" tense, i.e. "cu". Examples such as whether a kid who has never been in a pool "is a swimmer" and the meaning of "flammable" are the sorts of things I recall. I probably still have pc's correspondence on the matter. I associate "necessity operator" with ni'i (in BAI), and not with any of the ka'e/CAhA family. >>Almost all CV(')V cmavo have the same form of a rafsi of something. My >>guess is the ones that are related to that something are in the >>minority. "ka'e" was obviously taken from "kakne", yes, but the >>connection is kind of malglico. Similarly "pe'i" comes from "pensi", >>"ti'e" from "tirna", and thare are other mnemonics that go through >>malglico glosses. > Right, but with e.g. {pi'o}, it's a no-brainer that the cmavo has > nothing to do with pianos despite sharing {pipno}'s rafsi's form. > With {ka'e}, one would not think it was such an accident. In > principle of course no cmavo need to be related to the gismu with that > cmavo's form. It wasn't an accident, and it is news to me that ka'e is more like cumki than kakne. IIRC, ka'e was supposed to be the actuality neutral combination of pu'i (can and has) and nu'o (can and has not). A contradictory negation of a ka'e sentence would seem to give its opposite. >>>Meanwhile, vlasisku, BPFK section >>>CAhA, cmavo.txt and the CLL say nothing about {cumki} wrt {ka'e}. >> >>In jbovlaste "ka'e" is defined as "fi'o se cumki". But since I wrote >>that definition I guess I can't count that as evidence. :) > > It's only in the Lojban record! Side note: which should I rely on > more, vlasisku or jbovlaste? I find vlasisku's cross linking and more > complete search results to be superior. If someone rolled in the > BPFK definitions and CLL sections, it would be almost ideal. So far as I know, jbovlaste is not official about anything. cmavo are defined by CLL, and only by CLL, since the LogFlash cmavo lists were deemed inadequate. One of the main reasons we did not have a dictionary a long time ago was that I had no good idea how to create good dictionary-style cmavo definitions. I've never reviewed any jbovlaste definitions (not being fond of web-interfaces in general, I want a real dictionary %^) >>>Also, while {cumki} does express possibility, {ka'e}, from the given >>>definitions, seems to be more about ability than possibility. >> >>But whose ability? Each of the arguments of the relation modified by >>"ka'e"? The x1? The agent (assuming there is one)? > > You're asking me?! Well since you asked, from what I see, I would > definitely assume the x1, given the glosses, proposed keywords, and > examples in the CLL and BPFK. That was the intent (or rather the "subject" rather than x1, since you could access the x2 with "se brivla" etc), though I admit that I didn't and still don't really understand why it couldn't apply to one of the other places. If I make a ka'e capability claim involving all the places of klama, then the claim applies just as much to the place gone to as to the go-er. If I can go to a place (from somewhere else by some route), then that place can be gone to by me, and likewise, if I cannot, then it cannot. > In particular the CLL examples indicate > very clearly that {ka'e} and related CAhA are some sort of short-scope > selbri modifiers and emphatically _not_ true modal operators with > scope over the whole bridi. I won't claim to know the difference. >>>In >>>order to say things like "it possibly brodas" and "it necessarily >>>brodas" I have to believe that these concepts should have their own >>>words, without mixing ability into it. >> >>I agree that the word "ability" should not appear in the definition of >>CAhAs, since events don't really have abilities. > > It's not just "ability" that seems off, it's also the ambiguous "can" > and "innate capability" as well as the conspicuous absence of "may", > "might" and above all "POSSIBLE". "possible" (cumki) seems to ONLY be about events, whereas I thought ka'e and CAhA was more about the sumti that participate in the events. Maybe there isn't a lot of difference, though. >>>These primitive logical >>>operators strike me as vastly worth assigning two disyllables from >>>cmavo space, especially in light of some of the other things >>>available. Just my 2 cents. >> >>I agree. I have said before that it is extremely weird that a logical >>language doesn't have a word for the "necessarily" operator. > > The fact that there is no necessity operator strongly suggests that > the language designers did not have the foggiest notion of modal logic > when they created {ka'e}. Or maybe pc and I understood at the time that necessity was not something covered in CAhA, (since I am pretty sure he has *at least* a "foggiest notion".) Clearly I do need to dig out that old correspondence, and see if this was one of those topics that he set down in writing rather than explained to me over the phone. lojbab -- Bob LeChevalier lojbab@lojban.org www.lojban.org President and Founder, The Logical Language Group, Inc. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group. To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.