Message-Id: <m0qIBV1-00001wC@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Fri, 24 Jun 1994 20:16:16 EDT
Reply-To:     jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU
Sender:       Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@FINHUTC.hut.fi>
From:         Jorge Llambias <jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU>
Subject:      Re: sumti categories
To:         lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu
Content-Length: 2641
Lines: 61

la kolin cusku di'e

> The way it works is that if the terbri is +feat for some feature, and the
> sumti is -feat, then the combination fails category consistency (I agree
> that this does not per se make them ungrammatical); similarly
> if the terbri is -feat, and the sumti +feat. But if either happens to be
> unspecified for that feature, the combination is OK as far as that feature
> goes.

Ok, now I will give each feature a value of "usefulness", from 0 to 1,
such that 0 is useless and 1 most useful.

If there is no terbri with either +feat or -feat, then the feature is
useless, because the category doesn't restrict anything. If every terbri is
either +feat or -feat then the feature has usefulness=1. In general, the
more terbri there are with the feature unspecified, the less useful the
feature.

> > > Most terbri are -set but unspecified for mass
> >
> > Is any terbri unspecified for set? Probably not, in which case +/-set
> > is a useful category for this purpose.
> >
> Yes, there are several. For example 'se badri' and 'lidne',
> 'se casnu', 'banro', 'se galfi'.

I really don't see how a set (as opposed to its elements) can be
a topic of discussion 'se casnu', or an object of sadness 'se badri'.
'banro' and 'se galfi' are dubious, but I guess we could define
time dependent sets. 'lidne' seems ok, but I think this belongs
to a special class of selbri where x1 and x2 have to be the same type
of object, and there isn't much restriction on what they are as long
as they are of the same type.

I would say the feature 'set' has a high usefulness. Most terbri
are -set, some are +set, and very few (but I guess some) are
undefined ~set.

Another very useful feature would be 'number'. For instance namcu,
se mitre, se cacra, etc, are all +number. Most terbri are -number.
I can't think of any that would be ~number, in which case this
has usefulness = 1. (Maybe those unspecified for set are also
unspecified for number, though.)

A third useful feature (borrowing from Colin's list) is 'proposition'
(or du'u). Again most terbri are -proposition, some are +proposition
(and most of these are clearly so marked in the gismu list) and very
few if any are ~proposition.

Yet another is 'text' (sedu'u).

A nice thing about those four features, on top of them having high
usefulness, is that they are all mutually exclusive: if a terbri is
+ for one of them, it cannot be + for any of the others.

Properties like 'mass' or 'plant' have very low usefulness (in my
scale) and so in my opinion it is not so interesting to know the
value of these features for every terbri, which will be mostly
unspecified anyway.

Jorge