Message-Id: <m0ovBnA-0000PYC@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Thu, 4 Nov 1993 15:50:00 EST
Reply-To:     protin%USL.COM@FINHUTC.hut.fi
Sender:       Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@FINHUTC.hut.fi>
From:         Art Protin <protin%USL.COM@FINHUTC.hut.fi>
Subject:      Re: TECH: more thoughts on zi'o
To:           Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Content-Length: 2824
Lines: 60

Thank you all who responded.  I now have a better understanding
of zi'o.  Now, the challenge is to convince me, if you care,
that klama with a zi'o in any place is meaningful.  I doubt it.
I rank that up there with various absurd metaphysical arguments
about a chair that is not a chair.

Richard Kennaway <jrk@SYS.UEA.AC.UK> stepped up to my previous
challenge with:

>>(Tell me again John why the loglan predicate "bluer-than" is
>>impossible to use with negation.)
>
> In Institute Loglan, omitted places were at one time considered
> to be existentially quantified over.  (I don't know whether
> this is still the case.)  The negation of "x bluer-than" would
> be "it is false that there exists a y such that x is bluer than
> y", which is probably a stronger claim that intended.  This is
> shown more clearly by e.g. "slower-than".  "It is false that
> there exists a y such that x is slower than y" means not that x
> is faster-than something (which one might have wanted it to mean),
> but that x is at least as fast as everything (which one would
> rarely wish to express).

Though, I don't understand why the most useless and counterintuitive
rules of precedence were chosen for combining the ellipsis and the
negation.  I would have bound the negation tighter than the
existential quantifying.  For example "not bluer-than" becomes
"there exist a y such that it is false that x is bluer-than
y".  If this is supposed to be the distinction between "scalar
negation" and "logical negation", I believe that "scalar negation"
is much more useful to me.  If that is the distinction between
scalar & logicial negation, I believe that what I can say with
logical negation is a proper subset of what I can say with scalar.
If that is not the difference, then I am more comfortable with
the use of logical negation but still fuzzy about the distinction.

I find that a great many interesting distinctions can be expressed
if both the listener and speaker can binding the negation at various
levels of the structure being expressed.  Double negatives only
cancel if there is nothing intervening.  "I saw nothing on the
road ahead" is significantly different from "I did not see
anything on the road ahead".

    I expect that all implied components of my speech will be
understood in the full context of what I have said.  This rule
is violated by the existential quantification occurring before
the negation.  The negation was stated.  The existential
quantication (EQ) was implied.  The implied EQ must applied to
the entirety of what was explicitly stated.


    thank you all,
    Art Protin

PS.  I sorry if this rambles a little.


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.