From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Tue Oct 26 04:51:59 1993 Received: from ELI.CS.YALE.EDU by NEBULA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Tue, 26 Oct 1993 09:12:45 -0400 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by eli.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Tue, 26 Oct 1993 09:12:41 -0400 Message-Id: <199310261312.AA02653@eli.CS.YALE.EDU> Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 4237; Tue, 26 Oct 93 09:10:36 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 3064; Tue, 26 Oct 93 08:55:00 EDT Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1993 08:51:59 -0400 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: TECH: more on panra and only X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch Status: RO X-Status: Well, Nora and the rest of the Monday night crew didn't think much of my formulation for panra, but for relatively minor reasons. She liked the idea of a focus on differences, but does not like the concept that all differences must be enumerated implied by my "only". She poses a parallel where the essential difference between two objects is one of color, but notes that inherent to there being two objects, there must also be the non-essential difference in position. She says she would accept a place structure that had both a similarities and a differences place provided that both places were marked as "essential or relevant" similarities/differences rather than "only" and thus need not be a complete enumeration. She agrees that the standard place should go, being tied to either the similarities of the differences place, or both. In passing though, she sympathized with my constant heartache over "only" and came up with what she thinks is the solution, and even convinced me. I have no idea if it has been proposed before - there having been so many spilt electrons on this subject. She said that all that is need is to have a gismu for "unique/only" and then upon defining what she meant, this meant merely that we need to have a relationship between a set description and a COMPLETE specification of its members. cmima does not do this - x1 of cmima could be a single member out of many. However, one version of the place structure proposed a couple of months ago for mei DOES work, in that x1 is a mass, x2 a set, and x3 is either a complete list of members or like cmima is one or more of the members (two interpretations - I recall that Cowan and I disagreed, and the current wording is unfortunately ambiguous as to the decision, if we reached one). If the former, complete enumeration is required in x3, then "only" is "terso'umei", with "terpavmei" for "only/unique". it was noted that the other noncomplete membership could probably be covered by a compound using cmima. A side observation is that EVERY time a place structure calls for a complete specification of set members then there is an implicit "only" as one meaning for that predicate. I'm pretty sure that this doesn't eliminate the need for "po'o" but could make its meaning broader and clearer - when attached to any sumti it makes the metalinguistic claim that the sumti is the complete set of values that makes the bridi true. Presumably on a selbri, it makes the claim that the selbri is the only valid relation between the places. This probably fails the test of usage though, and the selbri, if not both interpretations, may need to be worded as "the only essential or relevant". a) Does this version of panra sound more satisfactory? b) Does the solution to only, and the associated decision on the x3 of mei seem ok? c) Does this clarify and make "po'o" more acceptable to the community? lojbab