Received: from ELI.CS.YALE.EDU by NEBULA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Wed, 13 Oct 1993 15:41:17 -0400 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by eli.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Wed, 13 Oct 1993 15:40:39 -0400 Message-Id: <199310131940.AA05234@eli.CS.YALE.EDU> Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 5984; Wed, 13 Oct 93 15:38:45 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 9250; Wed, 13 Oct 93 15:40:17 EDT Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1993 15:38:00 EDT Reply-To: protin@USL.COM Sender: Lojban list From: Art Protin Subject: Re: Lean Lujvo and fat gismu X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch Status: RO X-Status: X-From-Space-Date: Wed Oct 13 11:38:00 1993 X-From-Space-Address: @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET 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 STANDARD DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are strictly those of the author and are in no way indictative of his employer, customers, or this installation.