From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Wed Mar 10 23:12:51 1993 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Thu, 11 Mar 1993 04:15:43 -0500 Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 0237; Thu, 11 Mar 93 04:14:40 EST Received: from CUVMB.BITNET by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 4392; Thu, 11 Mar 93 04:15:35 EST Date: Thu, 11 Mar 1993 04:12:51 -0500 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: TECH: *mo'u X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch Status: OR Message-ID: <_icjGteDDKN.A.7y.t20kLB@chain.digitalkingdom.org> We had a discussion about this issue in our (now finally restarted) Monday night Lojban group meetings. To try to make some progress, I posed the question of whether we might want to use the proposed cmavo to attach something other than "more than" "less than" or "equal to" as a non-logical connective. Specifically, how about something like linking a person and a language in a predicate about communication (yes, "tavla" has a language place, but other predicates don't) mi ?naubau la lojban cu ciska The negative side is that argument of Colin's: is the non-logical glomeration of "me" and "Lojban" a suitable value for the x1 of cusku. I think in some sense that it can be - that sense which was the original meaning of *mo'u - a modal restriction on "me" that is necessary to make the main bridi true (if you are looking at it in a particular way), and hence not an incidental statement like "ne" would entail. Unlike the semau examples we were using, I do not see there being a different predicate that should become the main bridi in order to express this properly. It would appear that Cowan's proposed implementation of this construct at the termset level would meet most needs, and I think that the construct is indeed akin to termsets - the modally restricted sumti is in effect a different sumti of the predicate, one which the BAI tag indicates something about the nature of the relationship, but which needs to be liked to one or more particular other sumti in order to fully realize the meaning/commonality that is expressed by the construct. On the other hand, I sense that there is a need for something like this in the tanru (and maybe lujvo) gramm. I don;t think that even the arguments on more-than or less than eliminate the usefulness of a tanru modal link, , Try the concept of "cat-more-than-dog lover". How can we express this in a tanru? At best using a be/bei constructiuon with"fa" and "fe" to specify both the cat and the dog. Colin's argument doesn't eliminate this one - there is no way to make this a tanru based on "more-than" that I can see. And what if we wanted to make a lujvo for the above concept. The only way I can imagine it is to have a rafsi, presumably associated with the "*mo'u" replacement, which would precede a rafsi for a gismu and make other rafsi surrounding the gismu be thought of as sumti of the gismu (I hope that is more clear in this context than I'm afraid it is). This makes for a long lujvo: mlaty(xu'u)maugerkynelci is the unreduced form for the above concept, assuming that "xu'umau" is acting like a kind of "joi" connective. So the question for Cowan is whether there is a way to add the grammar he proposes at the term level to the tanru grammar as well. I don;t see it being needed at any other places where JOIKs appear. I'm not sure I see much need for both a forethought and an afterthought version, though I wouldn;t object. I do see this as being akin to JOIKs, with the added proviso that there is this tie both to the BAI set, and in the lujvo world, to the gismu from which the BAIs are derived. (One alternative would be something that, instead of using the BAI as the basis for the connective, it would use a gismu(or selbri) as the basis - this in the grammar of terms as well as in the grammar of tanru, so as to match what must be done to make lujvo work.) Hope this muddle makes sense at least to those who were following the earlier messages in this thread. I feel like I'm really groping to try to explain what I'm thinking of, and it ain;t coming out too well. I sense with my Lojbanic instinct that there is a useful extension to the langauge here (I'm becoming convinced though that we are talking solely extensions to the language and that the language as it is will work. But if this is useful, if a bit cumbersome, it may add a few more dozen flowers to the thousand bloomers that inhabit the Lojban world. Enough for 4am. lojbab