Return-Path: Date: Mon, 17 Jun 91 15:03:35 EDT From: "Arthur W. Protin Jr." (GC-ACCURATE) To: lojban-list@snark.thyrsus.com Subject: Re: 'case' and Lojban Message-Id: <9106171503.aa15543@COR4.PICA.ARMY.MIL> Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Mon Jun 17 15:21:21 1991 X-From-Space-Address: cbmvax!uunet!PICA.ARMY.MIL!protin Folks, Lojbab presents some interesting arguments about and against cases. My thinking on this has been most subliminal (emotional), and I feel at this point very unreceptive to case tags. However much I feel that they are a corruption and contamination of lojban, I am unwilling to further that position by faulty logic. Lojbab offered an informal proof that if places are cases then there can not be a limited set of cases that will suffice for lojban. The basic form of it was to examine lujvo and induction on the number of gismu being combined. He suggested that since the number of gismu involved is unlimited and that each contributes zero or more cases (places) that any fixed limit would eventually be exceeded. The flaw is actually mentioned in presentation of this proof. > Some places will be eliminated because the lujvo-making in > effect allowed some variety of one of the terms to fill > a place in the other term's place structure. Thus, if there really is a limited set of cases that cover all possibilities, as the limit was approached, each additional gismu would fill in as many or more cases as it opened. There do exist infinite sequences of integers from the interval [-5,5] that such that every partial summation is from some interval [0,n]. Has anyone yet proved that these additonal cases are really needed? Or is this just a feature that has been recognized as offering flexibility and possibly increased expressiveness? I find that the corpus of lojban has hardly tested the limits of expressiveness without the tagged cases, and am suspicious of this feature. Please don't let us "cop out". thank you all, Arthur Protin Arthur Protin These are my personal views and do not reflect those of my boss or this installation.