On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 11:44 PM, D <datapacrat@gmail.= com> wrote:

On Jan 22, 2:31=A0pm, ".arpis." <rpglover64+jbo...@gmail.com> w= rote:
> Evidentials do not take arguments.

True; but at least some vocatives do.

Vocatives take only the perso= n to whom you're speaking as an argument.

> {fi'o te kanpe xokau} (replace xokau with some number) uses an exp= erimental
> gismu, but conveys, in otherwise standard lojban, a linear certainty, = and
> is intended to be used with indefinite numbers.
>
> {de'o} appears to be the mekso operator for log; I guess you could= say
> {fi'o te kanpe li de'o ni'u xa}, or define an experimental= cmavo in the BAI
> class to mean something similar.

Hm... As interesting as the construction you present is, it also seem= s
to lose the main advantage of indicators, which can be applied to
almost any individual part of a sentence, as well as the sentence as a
whole.

BAI appear (almost) anywhere in a sentence,= although less than so than indicators; I don't think it's too much= of a stretch to have emphasis appear depending on position: e.g.
{bai d= o mi klama} vs
{mi bai do klama} vs
{mi klama bai do}

Alternatively, if you wish= to explicitly tag sumti with probabilities, you can use modal relative phr= ases (http://dag.github.com/cll= /9/10/). e.g.:
{mi pe bai do klama}

As far as I can tell, {bi'a} is not currently being used by Lojban,
and isn't even anywhere in lojban.org's list of currently or formerly
proposed/experimental cmavo. Would a definition such as the following
be incompatible with baseline Lojban? That is, would this way of
arranging such a cmavo allow for more than one reading, or conflict
with some other aspect of Lojbanic principles?

I think it's convention to have non-standard cmav= o avoid CVV word shape; perhaps try {bi'ai}, although you should have s= ome more motivation behind its morphology than that no-one is using it.

Again, if {bi'a} is a vocative, then it inherits all of the vocativ= e grammar and some of their semantics. In particular, {bi'a doi .djan.}= becomes grammatical, with the {doi} attaching to {bi'a}.
=A0

bi'a [number] [do'u]

This phrase as a whole is grammatically treated as a single evidential
indicator. The number is the decibels of Bayesian probability the
speaker assigns to the word or phrase the evidential refers to; zero,
or a lack of a number, indicates 0 decibels (meaning 50% probability).
{do'u} is mandatory if the next word is another number, in order to
prevent confusion; otherwise it is optional.

ki'esai,
--
DataPacRat
lu .iacu'i ma krinu lo du'u .ei mi krici la'e di'u li'u= traji lo ka
vajni fo lo preti

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