From cbmvax!uunet!cuvma.bitnet!LOJBAN Fri Mar 20 13:19:51 1992 Return-Path: Received: by snark.thyrsus.com (/\==/\ Smail3.1.21.1 #21.19) id ; Fri, 20 Mar 92 13:19 EST Received: by cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com (5.57/UUCP-Project/Commodore 2/8/91) id AA10719; Fri, 20 Mar 92 13:13:05 EST Received: from rutgers.edu by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA05357; Fri, 20 Mar 92 11:11:33 -0500 Received: from cbmvax.UUCP by rutgers.edu (5.59/SMI4.0/RU1.4/3.08) with UUCP id AA28557; Fri, 20 Mar 92 10:33:57 EST Received: by cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com (5.57/UUCP-Project/Commodore 2/8/91) id AA26164; Fri, 20 Mar 92 10:04:39 EST Received: from pucc.Princeton.EDU by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA17900; Fri, 20 Mar 92 09:55:16 -0500 Message-Id: <9203201455.AA17900@relay1.UU.NET> Received: from PUCC.PRINCETON.EDU by pucc.Princeton.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 5921; Fri, 20 Mar 92 09:54:47 EST Received: by PUCC (Mailer R2.08 ptf012) id 7208; Fri, 20 Mar 92 09:54:25 EST Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1992 09:54:14 -0500 Reply-To: "Mark E. Shoulson" Sender: Lojban list From: "Mark E. Shoulson" Subject: bu'a brouhaha X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: CJ FINE's message of Wed, 18 Mar 1992 19:19:59 GMT Status: RO Colin writes: >John Cowan: >> It's simply a convention of the language that " bu'a" within a >> prenex quantifies over the relationship; it's not semantically parallel to >> "ro prenu". To make it otherwise would require magic behavior where "bu'a" >> worked like a sumti within the prenex and like a selbri elsewhere, and >> the grammar simply isn't up to such tricks. You should think of "ro bu'a" >> as parallel to "ro da". >In a sense, that "magic behaviour" is exactly what you HAVE got - not >that "bu'a" is changing its selma'o, but that the sequence "ro bu'a" has >a completely different semantics - as you say, parallele to "ro da" - in >a prenex from anywhere else. That's how I see it as well, with this distinction between the grammatically identical {ro prenu} and {ro bu'a}, and the different ways of interpreting {ro bu'a} when it's in the prenex, but not otherwise. What if you have a prenex on a whole slew of sentences, with {tu'a}? Let's say I'm dealing with some unknown predicate.... pa bu'a zo'u tu'e [assorted sentences discussing and maybe clarifying this "bu'a"... li'o.. then eventually] .i ro bu'a zo'u mi nelci. Now, here we have a {bu'a} quantified at the beginning, discussed, and then used as a prenex >with whatever definition we had for it still intact<. Is this last sentence to mean "for all thingies, I'm fond (presumably of them)"? Or does the magic behavior of {bu'a} in prenexes kick in? Does it only work when it's not inside another prenex-determined block? In related news, yesterday being the holiday of Purim (read your book of Esther for details), I began thinking about Esther 8:1. The end of that verse reads (translation mine) "...and Mordecai came before the king, for Esther had told [the king] what he [Mordecai] was to her [namely, her uncle]." In Lojban, we usually specify the thing told with a LE word, permuting the selbri so it comes out to x1 and specifying, or use a NU or something. This is all fine. But here, it was *the relationship*, the *selbri* which Esther told, not a sumti. You might be able to do something with a nu or du'u, but I think that'd lose something. Here's one plan, using John's interpretation of {kau} (which, incidentally, I think is incomplete, since we've used {kau} to mean simply "known!"): .iki'ubo la .esTER. pu cusku zo'e ledu'u ko'a bu'akau ri ...Justified by: "ester" earlier expressed to-somthing/one the sentence: he1[Mordecai] is-in-some-relation(known!) with the-last[Esther]. Actually, maybe {co'e} instead of {bu'a}. This uses John's plan of using {kau} to flag things in {du'u}-clauses as what the outer clause applies to. I'm not sure I like this; any more elegant ideas? ~mark