From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Fri Apr 30 10:45:44 1993 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Fri, 30 Apr 1993 15:53:30 -0400 Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 8915; Fri, 30 Apr 93 15:53:04 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 7129; Fri, 30 Apr 93 15:53:50 EST Date: Fri, 30 Apr 1993 14:45:44 -0400 Reply-To: John Cowan Sender: Lojban list From: John Cowan Subject: TECH: a few points on cmavo X-To: Lojban List To: Erik Rauch Message-ID: 1) Despite Nick's retreat from it, I still like the idea of a pro-sumti which eliminates the place it fills. It is important to note that the presence of this cmavo implicitly changes the selbri, in the same way that the existence of a BAI place does so. Indeed, the relationship is polar: BAI tags add places rather than removing them. I have assigned the cmavo "zi'o", leaving the set "zi'a zi'i zi'u" for possible future use. The pattern of -a/-i/-u is common in many selma'o. The initial letter matches that of "zo'e" and "zu'i" but the vowels make the cmavo phonologically distinct. 2) I believe there is a weakness in the current handling of quantitative tenses. These are formed with a number followed by "-roi", and may be used to translate the English words "never", "once", "twice", ... "at all times". As explained in "Imaginary Journeys", however, the current formulation is convenient but insufficiently strong. Currently, a sentence like mi paroi klama le zarci I one-time go-to the store means merely that during some unspecified interval of time I went (or will go) to the store once. It does >not< mean that I went to the store once and only once, since I might have gone to the store at some time outside this implicit interval. Therefore, it is not possible to conduct logical reasoning on the above statement (to deduce "It is false that I went to the store twice", for example), since it is elliptical. The problem would be solved if there was an explicit cmavo for expressing the "universal time interval", stretching throughout all of time. In that case, the above example would indeed mean that I went to the store exactly once. (The exactness arises out of the nature of Lojban numbers, a discussion I don't intend to rehash here.) I suggest coopting the cmavo "ze'e" for this purpose. Currently it refers to a vague time interval; i.e. it is the same as no cmavo at all, and so is redundant. (An analogy: leaving off the time direction cmavo leaves the question of past or future unspecified, but there is no cmavo that expresses this unspecified-ness.) In the same way, "ve'e" would be coopted for the universal space interval. 3) I agree that "only" is too confusing to use as a keyword for the proposed new discursive; "uniquely" is more like it. But I believe it makes sense to add a discursive saying that the present case, specifically that part of it to which the discursive is attached, is without parallel. The uniqueness expressed by this discursive is in-mind (non-veridical), thus "Only Ralph knows where the treasure is" can be true, even though whoever hid it also (in a timeless sense) knows. I have assigned "po'o" to this job, which has been recycled from its previous use as the terminator for certain non-bridi utterances. It proved to be not necessary to have such a terminator. -- John Cowan cowan@snark.thyrsus.com ...!uunet!lock60!snark!cowan e'osai ko sarji la lojban.