From LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu Sat Mar 6 23:00:37 2010 Received: from uga.cc.uga.edu by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Tue, 1 Dec 1992 15:43:58 -0500 Received: from UGA.CC.UGA.EDU by uga.cc.uga.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 1234; Tue, 01 Dec 92 15:40:32 EST Received: from UGA.BITNET by UGA.CC.UGA.EDU (Mailer R2.08 PTF008) with BSMTP id 8701; Tue, 01 Dec 92 15:40:31 EST Date: Tue, 1 Dec 1992 18:48:18 +0000 Reply-To: CJ FINE Sender: Lojban list From: CJ FINE Subject: Re: The Distribution Problem: An Ambiguity? X-To: John Cowan To: Erik Rauch In-Reply-To: (null) Status: RO X-Status: X-From-Space-Date: Tue Dec 1 18:48:18 1992 X-From-Space-Address: @uga.cc.uga.edu:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Message-ID: I agree with Bob and Nora. John's argument assumes first that logical connectives in tanru are distributable, and secondly that this is a syntactic rather than purely semantic operation. I dispute both of these. In the first place, there are several reasons for thinking that internal connectives (jeks) cannot be factored out in the way that eks and giheks can. (I remember somebody saying this explicitly on the net several months ago - I think it was Bob quoting pc, but I'm not sure.) Thus lo nanmu je ninmu cu broda manifestly does not have the same truth condition as lo nanme .e le ninmu cu broda (I got worried with this when Iain Alexander (whom I presume John means when he says Iain Hamilton?) pointed out that ro lo nanmu ja ninmu cu broda means almost exactly the same as ro lo nanmu .e ro lo ninmu cu broda ) So even when we are not using true tanru (these are technically kanxe, not tanru) the assumption that the connective can be distributed is false. A fortiori, we should not expect that melbi je nixli ckule can necessarily be expanded to any melbi ckule je'ipaunai nixli ckule (Note that when the kanxe is the whole of the selbri of a bridi, expansion does seem to be well defined; thus ko'a broda je brode .ijo ko'a broda gi'e brode but as I have shown, the selbri of a selgadri is just as problematic as a seltanru or tertanru. Secondly, the different interpretations of such connected tanru seem to me to be well within the range of interpretations of simple tanru. We know that nixli ckule could be a school for girls or, as Bob says, a school with girl-like properties. Equally, then cmalu je nixli ckule which unambiguously means [cmalu je nixli] ckule, indicates a school which is (small and girl). Whether it happens to make sense to expand this as cmalu ckule gi'e nixli ckule is no more independent of the particular words used than is the question of whether cmalu ckule means ckule gi'e cmalu or ckule belo cmalu or even ckule befilo cmalu! I thus argue that there is an ambiguity, but it is of the form essential to tanru. The attempt to make such expressions formally expansible is a chimaera, at least with our present understanding of jeks. In passing, I disagree that "labno je remna" is a good tanru for "werewolf". I suggest that a werewolf is neither "labno" nor "remna" but precisely "labno joi remna". Colin