Return-Path: From: cbmvax!uunet!ee.mu.OZ.AU!nsn Message-Id: <9107010514.AA16800@munagin.ee.mu.OZ.AU> To: lojban-list@snark.thyrsus.com Cc: nsn@ee.mu.OZ.AU Subject: Panpredicate pomposity? Organisation: Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Melbourne Smiley-Convention: %^) Date: Mon, 01 Jul 91 15:14:07 +1000 Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Mon Jul 1 07:43:44 1991 X-From-Space-Address: cbmvax!uunet!ee.mu.OZ.AU!nsn Nick still catching up: >From: jimc@math.ucla.edu >Message-Id: <9106131551.AA02946@euphemia.math.ucla.edu> >To: lojban-list@snark.thyrsus.com >Subject: Re: expanding BAI form >In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 11 Jun 91 16:15:31 EDT." > <9106112015.AA02244@grackle.UUCP> >Date: Thu, 13 Jun 91 08:51:54 +0100 [Bob Chassell had said:] >> Perhaps we can do the same for members of selma'o BAI. which is what I started to do in my last mail. The analysis is needed to show why some omissions of {ne/pe} are nonsensical. Hands up all those who treated {be'i} as a true sumtcita dangling in the sentence, instead of sticking it next to the sent thing {lo se benji}. Mark, you're one of them %^) Do you all understand me? The reason why you use {ne} with {mau} and {be'i} and stuff is to kill ambiguity. I love you. Bob is the exceeder. Does this mean more than I do Bob or more than Bob does? You can't solve this by posi- tioning the {mau} next to its modificand, you've gotta explicitly link the two with {ne/pe}. Same with {be'i}. I find gold with a metal detector, {be'i la djan.}. What did john send - the gold, the detector, or me? be'i needs a ne/pe link, and the kind of analysis bob attempted and failed at, unaware of this feature, jimc applauds, I await, John will have to carry out for his cmavo list, and even lojbab admits is latent (he answered to Bob that each sumtcita does introduce a new predication; all I'm doing is saying we must know which predication it is to use them properly), is the subject of a sentence whose predicate I've forgotten. >Hear, hear for the pan-predicatist position! >(a) Pan-predicate definitions are easier for the users to learn. Well, more lojbanic, certainly. >(b) Similarly for mechanicals, i.e. it's easier for computer programs > to handle pan-predicates than non-predicate special cases. Who cares about computers, gentelemen (and if there's any women out there, please say something already %^) >(c) Theory is easier in that there's only one deep structure you have > to theorize about. Debatable, but I think the kinds of semantic transformations we'll have to use paedagogically and to give lojban a lojbanic metalanguage will make this inevitable. >(d) A "predicate language" OUGHT to be filled with predicates. Hehehe. Pull the other one %^) >Disadvantages of pan-predicatism: >(a) It's "traditional" for certain structures (especially ) to not > be predicates. >(b) It's "traditional" for predicates to be all tied up with "claims", > "veridical statements", etc, which are inappropriate for some > usages, especially . As a parallel, consider the s-bridi of > a sumti, which is obviously a predicate relation but which makes > no claim. >(c) Without question, users will rebel if required to say everything as > a bridi with explicit words. The pan-predicate interpretations > can only be deep structures, to which non-bridi surface structures > (such as diklujvo, and ) are transformed. jimc is edging closer and closer to understanding lojban %^) My felicitations, sir.