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Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2014 21:05:33 -0400
From: Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: tersmu 0.2
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* Wednesday, 2014-10-08 at 19:09 -0300 - Jorge Llamb=EDas <jjllambias@gmail=
=2Ecom>:

> On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 10:52 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
> >     lu'i re plise ->
> >     lo selcmi be re plise,
> > with {lo} having the maximality presupposition discussed elsewhere,
> > would be an answer. That presupposition in this case forces it to be
> > a kind; let's call it "sets of two apples". Is this really something we
> > want {lu'i} to be able to return?
>=20
> I wouldn't mind actually, mainly because I don't much care for sets in
> Lojban. But "lu'i" is not the most used LAhE. Those would have to be "tu'=
a"
> and "la'e" (and their cousin "na'e bo"), so I think we should concentrate
> mainly on these three to work out the rules.
>
> "la'e" is "lo se sinxa be", "tu'a" is "lo dumco'e be" or sometimes "lo
> nunco'e be", and "na'e bo" is "lo drata be" (or maybe better "lo nardu'o
> be").

Agreed; now the question is effectively whether those expansions occur
before or after the usual transformations for connectives and
quantifiers.

> "la'e" is hardly ever used with quantifier or logically connected
> arguments. Those would not be particularly useful with my proposed
> expansions.
>=20
> For "tu'a", it is crucial that it doesn't let quantifiers and connectives
> out since it's very purpose is to create an opaque context.

Yes, I can see the utility in the case of tu'a. So we'd have
    mi djica tu'a re lo mu plise
    -> mi djica lo nu re lo mu plise cu co'e
And more importantly,
    mi djica tu'a su'o re mikce
    -> mi djica lo nu su'o re mikce cu co'e

Probably these are equivalent to
    mi djica tu'a lo re lo mu plise
resp.
    mi djica tu'a lo su'o re mikce,
but using the quantifiers directly is cleaner. Moreover, something like
    mi djica tu'a ri na.a ra
is feasibly useful with the opaque reading, and hard to paraphrase
without it - it seems to need a hack like
    mi djica tu'a lo poi'i ri na.a ra .

> And "na'e bo" does have its uses. For example: "ro na'e bo ko'a .e ko'e" =
=3D
> "ro lo drata be ko'a .e ko'e" =3D "all but ko'a and ko'e". In this case, =
"all
> but ko'a and all but ko'e" would be less useful.

Hmm yes, and {ro lo drata be ko'a jo'u ko'e} has a (subtly) different
meaning, so again we'd be reduced to using {lo poi'i}.

> So, based on "tu'a" and "na'e bo", which together with "la'e" are basical=
ly
> the only members of LAhE/NAhE BO that have relevant use, I would say that
> the subordinate reading is what makes the most sense.

That seems fairly convincing.

I do worry about JOI, though. I agree it would be bizarre to have
qualifiers opaque but non-logical connectives transparent. But opaque
readings of non-logical connectives seem to tend toward the bizarre.
Moreover, there isn't always an easy way to get at the transparent
meanings.

Probably the most useful case is {fa'u}; e.g.
    mi .e do fa'u lo drata cu banli fa'u festi
I don't see a meaning to give that with the opaque reading, while the
transparent reading is clear, useful, and has no short alternative
expression. Well, you could use {jo'u} in place of {.e} to get roughly
the same meaning; but I could (and perhaps modestly should!) have made
it {na.e}.

Arguably {fa'u} has no business being in JOI anyway, so perhaps that
isn't a good example.

Other examples:

    ro bebna joi ro prije cu bebna
(here both readings have meanings, very different)

    ko kargau lo vorme ta'i lo nu batke me'o ci ce'o me'o pa ce'o me'o
	xa .a me'o bi to mi na morji
(here I'm not sure what the opaque meaning would be - some superposition
of the two sequences?)


Meanwhile, I had a quick look for usage. I found nothing relevant using
the corpus search (even for {tu'a}), but I found this example on the
BPFK "Indirect Referers" section:

> lu'a A ku'a B du lu'a A e B
> A member of the intersection of A and B is a member of A and of B.

That seems to require a transparent {lu'a}.

> > > So "li cy" is a free variable?  And bindable like "da": "ro li cy poi
> > > broda zo'u li cy brode". So "ro li cy" is not "ro da poi me li cy"?
> >
> > I certainly hope "ro li cy" is "ro da poi me li cy". Currently the only
> > exception to that is for the da-series, I think we'd need a very good
> > reason to add more.
>=20
> Good. But then is it worth making "li cy" differ from "cy"?

Well... I understand the main intention of mekso to be for reading off
mathematical formulae. If you're talking in maths about some constant
'c', you don't want it to suddenly become a bird because you happened to
remark on the view from the window... In other words, it seems healthy
to keep the mekso world mostly separate from the main bridi world, with
specific mechanisms like {li} and {mo'e} needed to connect the two.

> I don't think there's an entirely direct way to quantify over mekso
> > variables, but how about e.g. {ro namcu goi li xy zo'u} (which I would =
take
> > to be an abbreviation of {ro da poi namcu ku'o da goi li xy zo'u})?
>=20
> Right, but that would work with plain "xy" as well, right?

Sure.

> I think making "xy"=3D"li mo'e xy" but different from "li xy" is asking
> for trouble.

I can see people getting confused sometimes - but I think if mekso ever
came to see significant use, it would quickly seem natural.

> > No, but we do need to put the maximality condition in there if it should
> > be there.
> For analysis of logical forms? I'm not sure we do, since all we need to
> know is that "lo broda" is a constant (or a function, if "broda" contains
> free variables).

I don't see why we shouldn't consider any presupposition on that
constant/function to be part of the logical form. Certainly we lose
a lot of information by stripping it out.

> I think the maximality presupposition can't be properly examined without a
> clear idea of how the universe of discourse works. I suspect that the uses
> you have in mind as non-maximal with a certain understanding of UD can be
> reinterpreted as maximal with a different understanding of UD.

I don't think so; e.g. I would have said {mi ba citka lo plise} to mean
that I was going to eat a particular one of the five apples which I had
in mind (and in my sights), and in the expectation that my interlocutor
would pick up on contextual clues (like my grabbing hand) to guess which
I meant, rather than interpreting it just as "apple".

But I'm not particularly set on that meaning of {lo} - I'm only set on
there being a clear definition!

Martin

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