From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Mon Mar 15 10:27:42 1993 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Tue, 16 Mar 1993 00:34:01 -0500 Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 0490; Tue, 16 Mar 93 00:32:54 EST Received: from CUVMB.BITNET by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 6873; Mon, 15 Mar 93 19:00:28 EST Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1993 15:27:42 -0500 Reply-To: John Cowan Sender: Lojban list From: John Cowan Subject: Comments from pc on various issues X-To: Lojban List To: Erik Rauch Status: OR Message-ID: <2ggnC1Hw_MJ.A.a0.x20kLB@chain.digitalkingdom.org> Some of this is relevant to everyone, whereas other things may make sense only to lojbab; I am posting the whole anyhow. 1) I bounced the idea of using unbound "da" within "ka" abstractions to signify a propositional function off pc; he agrees that it is the Right Thing. Any other scheme, he says, for representing (lambda (x) ...x...) with an explicit arg-list would be intolerably clumsy. 2) I am now engaged in writing the paper on anaphora. pc agrees that this term has been wildly overextended in the past. Only the ri-series and the go'i-series are truly anaphora (because only they create repetition -- the literal meaning of the word). Most other KOhA and GOhA cmavo are in fact "deixis" -- they point to something, rather than repeating something. This includes the "di'u" and "di'e" series, which point to things in the linguistic stream rather than in the Real World, but nonetheless point. 3) I asked him how to express analogy, "A is to B as C is to D; A:B::C:D". I had only come up with: .abu simsa by. le te simsa be dy. bei cy. A is-similar-to-B in-property-the property-of-similarity-of D and C which requires inverting D and C (because "cy. simsa dy. zo'e" converts as "zo'e te simsa dy. cy."), and is distressingly lacking in symmetry. He proposed the alternative: le ka .abu simsa by. cu dunli le ka cy. simsa dy. the property-of A being-similar-to B equals the property-of C being-similar-to D 4) I asked him about the referents of "le sumti" and "le bridi" -- are they linguistic objects, or the referents of those linguistic objects. In the sentence "mi klama le zarci", is the sumti "mi", a text, or John Cowan, a person? pc and lojbab both thought they were texts. Occasional English- language use has been fuzzy, but the current place structures of "sumti" and "bridi" do not suggest linguistic objects. I propose, therefore, changing them from the current place structures: x1 is a/the argument of predicate/function x2 filling place x3 and x1 (du'u) is a predicate relationship with relation x2 by adding "(text)" after sumti x1 and x2, and changing "du'u" to "text" after bridi x1. among arguments (sequence/set) x3 -- John Cowan cowan@snark.thyrsus.com ...!uunet!lock60!snark!cowan e'osai ko sarji la lojban.