From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Mon Mar 15 10:56:25 1993 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Mon, 15 Mar 1993 07:21:34 -0500 Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 4970; Mon, 15 Mar 93 07:20:28 EST Received: from CUVMB.BITNET by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 2402; Mon, 15 Mar 93 07:21:33 EST Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1993 10:56:25 GMT Reply-To: C.J.Fine@BRADFORD.AC.UK Sender: Lojban list From: C.J.Fine@BRADFORD.AC.UK Subject: Re: TECH: *mo'u To: Erik Rauch Status: OR Message-ID: Thus lojbab: ` > 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. I dispute this. The normal way of expressing this would be mi bau la lojban. cusku in which mi is the x1, and la lojban is the un-numbered (and optional) 'bau' place of 'cusku' Any form in which 'bau' is bound in with 'mi' makes it (part of) the x1. The existing restrictive and non-restrictive forms are acceptable, (though perhaps a little hard to interpret) because it remains 'mi' that is the x1, and the 'bau' phrase adds some information to 'mi': mi pe bau la lojban. cusku "Those among me/us who are in Lojban, express..." mi ne bau la lojban. cusku "I/we, who incidentally am/are in Lojban, express..." but anything treated as a joik or jek in some sense puts the 'bau' into the x1 role, which is nonsense. There is a grammatical way of doing this, if you really want to: mi .ebaubo la lojban. cusku which clearly means the, to me nonsensical I, and in some language Lojban, express, ie I express and in some language Lojban expresses The other grammatical way to handle it is indeed to use termsets: nu'i mi .e bau la lojban. cusku which means I express, and somebody/thing expresses in Lojban which could pragmatically mean what is required, but to me only adds confusion relative to mi bau la lojban. cusku > > 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. No, becuase what you are apparently trying to express is fractured. There is no way that 'bau' belongs in the x1 except as a definitely subordinate modification of 'mi'. > > 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/commonali ty > that is expressed by the construct. Unless you can give me a convincing example of this, I do not accept the existence of such a relationship. > > 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. I don't see that this is any different from the cases already adduced. Is a 'cat-more-than-dog lover' a cat-lover and a dog-lover? if so, then we can now say lo mlatu jesemaubo gerku nelci If not, it is a logically erroneous construction to refer to it is a 'broda nelci' - though of course in tanru we can get away with grubby logic, and something like lo mlatu je gerku bo mleca nelci will do. > > 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. I don't think a long lujvo for this grubby and esoteric phrase is a problem. > 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 languag e > 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. ` This discussion is useful. I have just read your later posting about 'mi bau la lojban' and 'do bau lo glicu' and I see there is a problem. I will continue to think about this. I do think that the key is in termsets, however, not some new construction.