From lojbab Mon Aug 1 11:04:23 1994 Received: from access2.digex.net by nfs1.digex.net with SMTP id AA24099 (5.67b8/IDA-1.5 for ); Mon, 1 Aug 1994 11:04:03 -0400 Received: by access2.digex.net id AA00102 (5.67b8/IDA-1.5 for lojbab); Mon, 1 Aug 1994 11:03:51 -0400 From: Logical Language Group Message-Id: <199408011503.AA00102@access2.digex.net> Subject: Re: gradu is broken To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu Date: Mon, 1 Aug 1994 11:03:50 -0400 (ADT) Cc: lojbab@access.digex.net (Logical Language Group) In-Reply-To: <199407311120.AA13042@nfs1.digex.net> from "Nick NICHOLAS" at Jul 31, 94 09:19:23 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: 2008 Status: RO la nitcion. cusku di'e > Lojbab is going to invoke divine punishment on me for this, but it seems an > obvious oversight. la zipf. joi la r. joi la djig. joi la talen. dapma do > I think it makes all the sense of the world to make gradu: x1 is x2 units by > standard x3, where the unit measures property x4. This would make "it's 9 > volts", da dicyda'erau li so, consistent with "it's 9 grams", da grake li so. I think you are basically correct, provided that one concern is resolved: how do we say something like "the meter is the MKS unit of length"? Here "the meter" (which is hard to express in itself, but which I take to be something like "tu'a loi mitre") falls into the current x1 place of "gradu" very naturally: tu'a loi mitre cu gradu la mykysyc. loi nu clani I can't reconcile this, however, with the comment "[magnitude]" after x1 in the current gi'uste. > Yes? So there is some kind of confusion that needs straightening out. Changing "gradu"'s place structure will allow it to be used to make new units of measurement, but will eliminate the ability to talk >about< units of measurement. ni'o I went back to the original article by Scott Layson (TL3/1:70), wherein the current measurement place structures were proposed, and noted that he made a suggestion which didn't get taken up into Lojban: an x4 place for "rupnu", reflecting the date as of which the monetary unit is meaningful. Note that this is not the same as the date attached to the entire bridi: ca la socinan. le djima be pa xarju cu rupnu li cinono la merko la zepanan. simultaneous-with 93-year the price of 1 pig is-in-dollars the-number 300 by-standard named "U.S." as-of 71-year In 1993, the price of a pig was US$300 in 1971 dollars. I'm not proposing a definite place structure yet, because I don't yet have a name for this x4 place; I'm looking into what economists call the 1971-ness of a 1971 dollar. -- John Cowan sharing account for now e'osai ko sarji la lojban.