Return-Path: Message-Id: <9205211608.AA20862@relay1.UU.NET> Date: Thu May 21 12:29:15 1992 Reply-To: John Cowan Sender: Lojban list From: John Cowan Subject: proposed change to NAI X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan , Eric Raymond , Eric Tiedemann Status: RO X-Status: X-From-Space-Date: Thu May 21 12:29:15 1992 X-From-Space-Address: cbmvax!uunet!CUVMA.BITNET!LOJBAN I am strongly opposed to the idea of a second cmavo of NAI, both for Nick's reasons and because I believe it is far too late to introduce such a change. I currently favor the following set of choices for NAI meaning: A,GA,GIhA,GUhA,JA,GI contradictory (status quo) PU contradictory (status quo) FAhA contradictory (analogous to PU) BAI contradictory (status quo) TAHE, ROI contrary, "na'e" (status quo) COI, UI contrary, "to'e" (status quo) JOI, BIhI contrary (change to negation paper) NU undecided I believe that it makes no sense to logically contradict a non-logical connective: mi joinai do klama le zarci should not mean the same as simply mi joi do na klama le zarci It is false that you-and-I (as a team) go to the store Instead, I favor the translation: You and I (not as a team) go to the store. In other words, some other connective, perhaps non-logical ("jo'u"), perhaps logical (".e" or ".a" or even ".onai") applies. This is scalar negation where the scale is the other possible connectives. I would be willing to abandon the whole mess of logically connected abstractions (including negated abstractions). It was invented to handle "three blind mice, see how they run" by concocting an absurd combination of abstractors that were meant to capture the vague sense of "how". I think that "kajeni" and "nujezu'onai" and so on are warts. -- cowan@snark.thyrsus.com ...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan e'osai ko sarji la lojban