On W= ed, Dec 5, 2012 at 12:23 PM, la gleki <gleki.is.my.name@gmail.com= > wrote:

On Wednesday, Dece= mber 5, 2012 7:50:20 PM UTC+4, aionys wrote:

It took me a bit of searching to find this, but I did man= age to find a discussion that corroborates my statement. The following post= is by .xorxes.:

Subject: [lojban-beginners] How versatile is "= nu"?

On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 8:13 AM, Jorge Llamb=C3=ADas <= jjlla...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Mar 13, 2010= at 9:52 AM, tijlan <jbot...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Officially, the most generic/nonspecific of NU is "s= u'u"; but people
> seem to use "nu" more often for the purpose of = general abstraction.

The first thing I find odd about NU's is that they a= re called
"abstractors" instead of something more acurate like "subord= inators".
What NU does is take a bridi and convert it into a selbri, so = that it
will not be used as the main proposition but as a subordinate one.
It's true that properties and propositions are abstract ob= jects (as
are numbers), but for me there is nothing abstract about event= s.
Something that can be seen cannot be very abstract.

As for "su'u" as general subordinator, it was never used that= way,
whatever its definition says. We can only speculate as to the reasons.
One reason could be that Loglan had the equivalents of nu/ka/n= i but
nothing like "su'u", and people just went on with that. Also,= "nu" and
"ka" being just one syllable, and with such distinct functions, t= here
wasn't much incentive to merge them. CLL lists "su'u" amo= ng the "minor
abstraction types", which already suggests it was never t= hought of as
the "general abstractor".

> Personally, I wouldn't find it particularly odd if someone use &qu= ot;nu"
> for a terbri which the gimste defines as "du'u" or other= specific
> types of abstraction. For example:
>
> =C2=A0mi jinvi lo du'u broda (I think that the proposition "b= roda" is true)
> =C2=A0mi jinvi lo nu broda (I think that the event "= broda" is true)
>
> "jinvi"s x2 is officially to take "du'u". Is &= quot;nu" for such objects of
> mental activity / logical operation discouraged? If so, why?

I suppose it's mainly tradition. One subordinator would probably = be
all that is needed, but the nu/ka/du'u split is very entre= nched. "ka"
is used for incomplete propositions, where you need to keep one (and
in a couple of cases more than one) argument slot open. "du'u"= ; is used
mainly with propositional attitude predicates. It's a relatively short<= br> list, maybe twenty or so gismu. In most other cases you can use "nu".

Notice that the choice between nu/ka/du'u is dictated by t= he outer
bridi, the one that contains this one as an argument, whereas the
choice between the four types of nu: za'i/pu'u/zu'= o/mu'e is dictated
by the subordinate bridi itself.
<= div>