From snark!cowan@GVLS1.VFL.PARAMAX.COM Ukn Aug 3 22:34:19 1993 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Tue, 3 Aug 1993 22:34:18 -0400 Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 9672; Tue, 03 Aug 93 22:33:10 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 9897; Tue, 03 Aug 93 22:34:34 EDT Date: Tue, 3 Aug 1993 12:54:20 EDT Reply-To: John Cowan Sender: Lojban list From: John Cowan Subject: Re: response to jimc on -mei X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch In-Reply-To: <199308030317.AA10652@panix.com>; from "Rob Brady" at Aug 2, 93 11:17 pm Status: RO X-Status: Message-ID: la rab. breidis. cusku di'e > Of course (you knew I was going to ask this at some point) the question comes > up, "How dO you mealinguistically state that you are using a different base?" "Metalinguistically" means "outside the regular flow of discourse". There are two mechanisms for this in Lojban: TO-TOI parentheses, which can be totally irrelevant to the context, and SEI-SEhU comments, which are intended to be relevant. As far as I know, we have no brivla yet for "mathematical base", although perhaps "ju'u zei namcu" would do. So you could insert something like sei li paxa ju'u zei namcu comment: the-number one-six is-the-base type-of number into an introductory sentence of a passage whose numbers are hex by default. Constructions with "sei" are free modifiers, and may be placed wherever "#" appears in the BNF. > Would I > have to explicitly state "I'm using hex" (aka hexadecimal | base 16) Essentially, yes. However, the "sei" makes it clear that you are commenting on the surrounding discourse, explaining how it is to be interpreted. "sei" is like line-by-line comments; "to" is more of a shell escape. > furthermore how would you revert to decimal, by > referencing dau or pano. You could use another "sei". Probably you should use "dau" rather than "pano", on the general principle that comments inherit their context by default. -- John Cowan cowan@snark.thyrsus.com ...!uunet!lock60!snark!cowan e'osai ko sarji la lojban.