From wetblu!uunet!cs.NYU.EDU!est Wed Jun 6 07:46:12 1990 Return-Path: Received: by marob.masa.com (/\=-/\ Smail3.1.18.1 #18.7) id ; Wed, 6 Jun 90 07:46 EDT Received: by wetblu.hollander.com (/\=-/\ Smail3.1.16.1 #16.12) id ; Wed, 6 Jun 90 07:19 EDT Received: from cbmvax.UUCP by uunet.uu.net (5.61/1.14) with UUCP id AA20211; Wed, 6 Jun 90 03:59:32 -0400 Received: by cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com (5.57/UUCP-Project/Commodore Jan 13 1990) id AA06534; Wed, 6 Jun 90 03:40:33 EDT Received: by snark.uu.net (smail2.3) id AA02285; 6 Jun 90 03:04:33 EDT (Wed) Received: from CS.NYU.EDU by uunet.uu.net (5.61/1.14) with SMTP id AA24839; Tue, 5 Jun 90 04:39:58 -0400 Received: by cs.NYU.EDU (5.61/1.34) id AA02991; Tue, 5 Jun 90 04:38:37 -0400 Date: Tue, 5 Jun 90 04:38:37 -0400 From: wetblu!uunet!cs.NYU.EDU!est (Eric Tiedemann) Message-Id: <9006050838.AA02991@cs.NYU.EDU> To: snark!lojban-list Subject: Nibbles on irresistible bait... Pdms: 2 Status: RO From: jimc@math.ucla.edu Subject: Re: Proposed changes to lexeme ZIhA grammar Date: Thu, 31 May 90 09:23:26 -0700 1. A set or list with explicitly stated members. (Coffee, tea or milk: choose one from the set.) (An old Loglan puzzle; try translating that in Lojban.) ko cuxna pada le ckafi ce'o le tcati ce'o le ladru "Choose one thing from the set: coffee, tea and milk." NBs: The gismu for this are all lesson 2 words and I didn't have to look any of them up. Whee! The JL10 cmavo list gives ce'o as the oset (i.e., ordered) and ce as the set connectives. The grammar summary has this reversed, which is the way I'm using them. Date: Fri, 1 Jun 90 16:07:24 EDT From: gls@Think.COM (Guy Steele) Subject: Proposed changes to lexeme ZIhA grammar This is off the main point, but I cannot resist. I am reminded of a toy company's slogan in the 1960's: "Every boy wants a REMCO toy--and so do girls." ro nanla cu djica lo la remcon. selkel .ije loi nixli go'i "All boys want (at least one) REMCO toy. And girls do to." My peers and I would misquote this as: "Every boy wants a REMCO toy--and also girls." The point of the gag (admittedly puerile, but at the time we were in fact puerile, after all) is that there is some ambiguity about the anaphoric reference: it is intentionally unclear whether "girls" is to replace "boy" or "toy". If the latter... ro nanla cu djica lo la remcon. selkel .ije go'i loi nixli "All boys want (at least one) REMCO toy. And they want girls." selkel is a lujvo that grabs the second place of kelci ("x1 plays with x2") and thus means plaything. If one followed your ambiguity to its logical extreme, one might wind up saying, "doi selkel". go'i just repeats the last bridi utterance with indicated modifications. So "mi go'i" usually makes a good "me too". A precise language should also be able to state such ambiguities precisely (though not necessarily concisely). Question: how is this gag to be expressed in Loglan? Perhaps some way of talking about sets of references? Um, how 'bout... loi nixli go'i gi'a se go'i "Girls want a REMCO toy and/or are wanted by boys." It's actually concise! Actually, because the "pronouns" of Lojban are all genderless and syntactically similar, would it not be all too easy to respond to "Karen wants to go swimming" by saying something like "And I want that" in such a way as to mean "And I want " rather than "And I want "? Not really. Consider: I guess the idiom "to go swimming" means "to go to a place where on may swim". Something halfway in that direction is... la karen. djica le nu voha klama le stuzi be le nu limna "Karen wants the event of her going to a site of swimming." However, you'll note that the simpler... la karen. djica le nu voha limna "Karen wants the event of her swimming." is structurally similar. It's this that I'll use. Now if I say, "mi go'i", and go'i has the obvious call-by-macro semantics, then the (genderless!) reflexive pronoun "voha" will refer to me. I think it's possible to construct a consistent semantics in which a relative pronoun retains it's original referent even when that referent is replaced in a go'i repetition..but it would be sadistic! On the other hand, I might say... mi djica fu'a vo'e "I want that too." "fu'a vo'e" refers to the second sumti of the *previous* bridi utterance. I *hope* that this is *not* a call-by-macro operation, but rather refers to the referent of that sumti such that the "voha" in it continues to refer to Karen. If so, we've got, "I want Karen to swim." Other neat things one could say include: mi djica fu'a vo'a "I want Karen." mi djica lahedi'u or mi djica le nu go'i "I want Karen to want to go swimming." If you want more ambiguity by now, you could say... mi djica le se djica be la karen "I want what Karen wants." -est