Message-Id: <MAILQUEUE2-102.931012195853.256@hylkn1.Helsinki.FI>
Date:         Tue, 12 Oct 1993 13:57:00 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: 1777
Lines: 49

John Cowan writes:

> It is this sort of fuzziness which caused the Lojban engineers
> to remove the comparative places from many gismu.  As Art Protin
> recently posted, Loglan "groda" historically meant "x1 is bigger
> than x2 by standard x3" and "x1 is big" was interpreted as "x1
> is bigger than something-unspecified".  (Institute Loglan has
> never had an equivalent of "zo'e").

> This gimmick breaks down in many cases, though: "x1 is not big"
> obviously cannot be so rewritten.

I am afraid I don't see this.  Either of the two forms seem to
make sense:

        X [is] not bigger-than [something-unspecified]

and

        X [is] reverse-relation bigger-than [something-unspecified].

(or reordered for English speakers "[something-unspecified] [is]
bigger-than X").

Also, the "heap paradox" seems very lame.  A heap is not precisely
defined and then a formal proof fails because of this imprecision
does not strike me as a really interesting paradox.  The
proof/paradox falls apart if I define a heap as

        a gravitationally stable aggregate of items such that
        there is no 2 available dimensional view that permits
        precise counting of the constituent items.

Then the heap ceases to be a heap when the constituent items
can be counted either because enough have been removed or
those items have been rearranged to distinguish each item.

The cleanup of the definition of small is more difficult,
but again a precise proof with imprecise terms should always
be suspect.  Any kind of nonsense can be shown with those.

    thank you all,
    Arthur 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.