From cbmvax!uunet!CUVMA.BITNET!LOJBAN Thu Jan 23 13:10:05 1992 Return-Path: Message-Id: <9201231646.AA26506@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1992 11:47:17 EST Reply-To: John Cowan Sender: Lojban list From: John Cowan Subject: lojbab's summary of "ty." uses X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan , Eric Raymond , Eric Tiedemann Status: RO Everything Lojbab said about "ty." is correct, except for: *ty. le mu prenu which does not mean "t of the five persons". Unfortunately, it is two successive sumti, "ty." and "le mu prenu". In order to say what "t of the five persons" says, we need: vei ty. [ve'o] le mu prenu in accordance with the rule that non-numbers used as quantifiers have to be wrapped in parentheses (vei/ve'o) to establish a mathematical context. The right paren is elidable in this case, and probably in most cases. Mark Shoulson also uses "li ty. .e ty." to get "T and T" where "and" is the Boolean operator of computer science. This is grammatical, but means the wrong thing: li ty. .e fy. du li fy. does not mean T(rue) and F(alse) is F(alse) but rather is equivalent to: li ty. du li fy. .ije li fy. du li fy. T(rue) is F(alse) and F(alse) is F(alse). which is plainly false, since True is not False. The intended use of operand logical connection is: vei ci .a vo [ve'o] prenu zvati le panka ( three or four ) persons are-at the park. The best way to render the Boolean logical "and" operator is probably to use the gismu: kanxe x1 is the conjunction of x2 and x3 and make it an operator with "na'u": li ty. na'u kanxe li fy. du li fy. Of course, there has to be global context assigning True to the variable "t" and False to the variable "f". -- cowan@snark.thyrsus.com ...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan e'osai ko sarji la lojban