Return-Path: <cowan>
Message-Id: <m0jnt1U-0004BSC@snark.thyrsus.com>
From: cowan (John Cowan)
Subject: Re: name predicates
To: lojban-list
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 91 10:51:41 EDT
In-Reply-To: <9106122100.AA00179@euphemia.math.ucla.edu>; from "math.ucla.edu!jimc" at Jun 12, 91 2:00 pm
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.2 PL13]
Status: RO
X-From-Space-Date: Thu Jun 13 10:52:24 1991
X-From-Space-Address: cowan

la djim. kartr. cusku di'e:
> One of my various Old Loglan proposals was for a "name tense"
> which would turn a selbri (e.g. solji djacu) into a name (Goldwater).
> Foreign names like .djan. would be interpreted as funny predicates 
> scarcely recognizable morphologically, and "la" would be like "le"
> except it has an implied "name tense".  It went over like a lead balloon.

No, it didn't!  (Boy, the guy doesn't even know when he wins!)  Both
Institute Loglan (as of NB3) and Lojban allow:

	la solji djacu
	the-one-whom-I-call a-gold-type-of water

as grammatical (substituting the appropriate Old Loglan gismu).  In Lojban
LA (including "lai" and "la'i") has all the grammatical uses of LE, plus
its special role directly preceding a (morphological) name.

In addition, Lojban now also has "la'o" for >really< alien names that have
to be set off by paired delimiters:

	la'o dot. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe .dot.

(Institute Loglan has "laa", which is similar, but only used before
Linnaean binomial names, without paired delimiters.)

> But I continue to believe that when you use a word as a name, you
> disconnect its usual meaning and turn it into a special kind of predicate
> with special semantics.  

True for Lojban if you substitute "description" for "word".  Thus:

	la ci cribe
	that-which-I-call "Three Bears"

can be the name of a single object (e.g. a restaurant).

> > Luciano-Pavarotti can Enrico-Caruso better than anyone else alive today.
> 
> Unfortunately you end up saying "Luciano Pavarotti IS Enrico Caruso"
> under a strict predicate interpretation.  

Depends what you take the predicate to mean.  The Lojbanic version of this

	me la enrik. karus.

can be read as "x1 is Enrico Caruso" or perhaps more usefully "x1 pertains
to Enrico Caruso under conditions x2".  Which is meant is currently an
unsettled question in the language.

-- 
cowan@snark.thyrsus.com		...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan
		e'osai ko sarji la lojban