Date: Wed, 6 Jul 1994 00:38:17 -0400 From: Logical Language Group Message-Id: <199407060438.AA03824@access3.digex.net> To: lojbab@access.digex.net Subject: Re: Problem perhaps Cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Wed Jul 6 00:38:22 1994 X-From-Space-Address: lojbab Discussing with Nora tonite, she isn't sure whether the termset version of respectively should work the same as I intended. As applied to the "spuda" question, the form (now that I have checked) is: mi spuda nu'i ro notci nu'ufa'u bau leri bangu with the intent that the non-logical connective "fa'u" will distribute the proper bangu to each of the notci. Nora notes that the one example she has seen of "fa'u" in John Cowan's papers (of which she hasn't look at every one) works a little differently,a nd with considerably more semantic leeway. (that example works only within a single sumti and presumes that at least one of the two distributed sets is explicitly enumerated,as in la djan fa'u le maik,l cu kansa levo'a speni John and Michael accompany their (reeespective) spouses. The one explicit fa'u-joining implies that there is some other, not vnecessarily explicit correspondence, that is similarly distributed. But this doesn't work when none of the sets is explciitly enumerated such that a "fa'u" can be used to join the elements. I suggest that the termset fa'u should also work, if only because I can't think of a better interpretation for the construct (which is legal) than the one we want to express here. But this may not be quite the same semantics as John's example in his paper. Nora feels that we should have an operator in LAhE, to go along with lu'a/lu'i/lu'o cinverters, which would exlicitly treat the sumti inside as distributed indivduals. I could accept this argument if there is agreement. ni'o On a slightly related point, I have not seen any comments regarding my discussions with Randall Holmes, nor have I been able to identify the "reflexive pronoun" that I thought we had added to Lojban. Was there any feelings regarding how we should treat reflexivity in Lojban (as I satted in stated in my earlier posting, "ke'a" and "ri" do not work in a sumti such as "le kansa be le ??? speni" "the accompanier of (his) spouse" ri would refer to the last COMPLETE sumti before the current one ke'a would/could refer outside the relative clause in which this sumti might be found If we don't have a solution, I will propose that we add such a pronoun to KOhA. lojbab