Message-Id: <MAILQUEUE2-102.931013204021.320@hylkn1.Helsinki.FI>
Date:         Wed, 13 Oct 1993 15:38:00 EDT
Reply-To: protin@usl.com
Sender: vilva
From: Art Protin <protin@usl.com>
Subject:      Re: Lean Lujvo and fat gismu
To: Veijo Vilva <VILVA@viikki21.helsinki.fi>
Content-Length: 1897
Lines: 49

John Cowan says:

> Ah.  I should have specified that I (since it was I who
> introduced negation into the discussion) was referring to
> logical (i.e. contradictory) negation.  "X is not blue"
> means "It is false that X is blue" here and throughout,
> as distinct from "X is non-blue", (i.e. scalar negation).
> Loglan has never made this distinction properly, but Lojban
> does: "na" is logical negation only, so "ko'a na blanu"
> means "It is false that X is blue".

Good!  While I will continue this discussion using logical
negation, I will claim here that scalar negation is a very
useful form that should be supported.

(I suspect that decisions were made about the meaning of
"[something-unspecified]" long ago that have ruined the
language for me.)

(Somewhere else I am sure that I said this but I will repeat
it here since it represents my remaining question.)

Why is there a problem with

        [It is] false [that] X1 [is] bluer-than [something-unspecified]

since there must, for all X1 other than the ultimate blue,
exist something that makes this statement true, namely the
ultimate blue.  For the example of "bigger-than", there is
no X1 that is excluded, since there is no ultimate big.

Are you attempting to infer too much about the "something-unspecifed"?
Can the negation be moved around relative the claim?
Are you forcing negation to be an operator that acts only
on the entire statement (even after filling in something
to hold the place of the something-unspecified)?
If that is the only use of negation, it is nearly worthless.

All the functionality of what you call "scalar negation" is
needed in a language for me to be able to think in it.

    thank you all,
    Art Protin


Arthur Protin <protin@usl.com>
STANDARD DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are strictly those of the author and
are in no way indictative of his employer, customers, or this installation.