From lojbab Sat Mar 6 23:00:50 2010 Subject: Re: Once again... To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu From: lojbab Date: Fri, 15 Apr 1994 15:34:20 -0400 (ADT) Cc: lojbab (Logical Language Group) In-Reply-To: <199404151914.AA04537@nfs1.digex.net> from "Matthew Faupel" at Apr 15, 94 06:47:33 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1452 Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Fri Apr 15 15:34:20 1994 X-From-Space-Address: lojbab Message-ID: <1fBNe-L-wdG.A.4hC.i80kLB@chain.digitalkingdom.org> la matius. cusku di'e > Is addition meaningful with only one argument? Yes, of course: addition with one argument is "unary plus". > Surely the addition operator > requires at least two operands and so if you provide only one, the listener > will (in good Lojban tradition) fill in the missing operand with the obvious > value. We have to distinguish between syntax and semantics here. Every operator can be used either as a 2-operand infix operator, thus: re su'i re 2 + 2 or as a su'o-operand prefix operator, thus: su'i reboi re[boi] where the elidable terminator "boi" is required to keep the numbers from combining into a single number. Some operators may make no semantic sense with the wrong number of operands, but + isn't one of them: Common Lisp, e.g. allows an arbitrary number of operands, including zero (Lojban can't handle zero operands for syntactic reasons). > This > is a moot point though in that, as has been pointed out, MEX expressions > can't be used with MOI or ROI without the rather clumsy {meli ... me'u} > bracketing. This works for MOI, but not for ROI, where there is simply no alternative to using a number or a lerfu-string -- you could say mi ry.roi klama le zarci (to li ry. du li re su'i re toi) I r-times go-to the store ( the-number r = the-number 2 + 2 ) I go to the store r times, where r = 2 + 2. -- John Cowan sharing account for now e'osai ko sarji la lojban.