Message-Id: <m0rEaEb-00007iC@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Sat, 3 Dec 1994 00:16:36 -0800
Reply-To:     Gerald Koenig <jlk@NETCOM.COM>
Sender:       Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@FINHUTC.hut.fi>
From:         Gerald Koenig <jlk@NETCOM.COM>
Subject:      Re: diversity
To:           Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Content-Length: 4682
Lines: 100

>
>la djer cusku di'e
>
>> Again, I don't know the design history.  But under my proposal you
>> *could* say { mi nitcu xa'a ti}.  Then "ti" would have to be an object,
>> person, etc. and not an event or a predicate.  In any case the
>> xa'a-xu'u method provides a general solution to temporarily re-defining
>> selbri so they can be used in a concrete way as they normally are in
>> first order logic.

Xorxes>
>If I understand your proposal, what would be the difference between it
>and allowing objects in every slot (which the grammar already does anyway)
>and saying that when a slot is filled with an object, the meaning is
>the one you would get with your xa'a-xu'u?
>

djer:
        I find your counter proposal, well, a little extreme.  Not all
slots can accept objects and make sense. The current grammar does allow
you to convert LE to NU by the use of tu'a etc. so they are suitable
occupants of an event sumti place, but that doesn't mean they have been
converted to objects.  My proposal changes the sumti place, not the
sumti, so there is no conflict with the present solution to sumti
raising.
        I would say that some of the sumti places that are currently
restricted to events can be converted to objects, and some cannot. Let's
call them reducible and irreducible.  Consider troci:

definition:
troci  try   x1 tries/attempts/makes an effort to do/attain
x2 (event/state/property) by actions/method x3 [also experiments at]

We have a trier, a goal state, and an action as permissible sumti
values.  I believe it is true that if anyone is a trier, then he takes
action, or at least expends  energy in a physical or mental way.  I say
that x3 troci is irreducible to an object if we want to make any sense
out of the predicate.  It must be an action; that is, a NU type sumti.
On the other hand I can see where x2, the goal state, could be seen
instead as an object. For instance one could try to attain a door prize
at a party by going to the party. Then one could say:

xa'a ko'a cu troci lo vorme se jinga  xu'u lo nu ko'a klama lo te salci
but
xa'a ko'a cu troci lo vorme se jinga lo te salci xu'u

would make no sense since x3 troci is irreducible. lo te salci, the
party, is not an action taken by x1, so we have a trier whose alleged
action is a party, which makes no sense.

Likewise (no offense) it would make no sense under your reductio ad
absurdum proposal which yields the same result. This language shifter
cmavo has to be used with discretion. It has far reaching consequences.
It really claims that anything bracketed by it is convertible into
first order predicate calculus. Thus it rules out the tense system, for
example.  It's the big hit list. It maps a subset of lojban onto FOL.

It also rules out expressions of 2nd order such as the one recently
supplied by djan:

ro bu'a zo'u la .aniis. cu djica le nu bu'a .inaja bu'a

because it contains second order sumti.

I would like to digress on bu'a.  The series is said to be "(logically
quantified predicate variables)".  This goes to the issue I raised
previously as to what is a predicate variable and what is a variable
predicate. A predicate variable is a member of the "da, de, di" series
and a variable predicate is a member of the broda, brode, brodu series,
if I haven't gone dyslexic due to a cold.  So bu'a bu'e etc. would
correspond to examples like "ro broda" or "su'o broda" or " ci brode"
or "pa  brodu".  Or maybe "ro( x1 broda x2 x3)".  Anyway the above
sentence is a good example of a 2nd order sentence, which would be ruled
out by xa'a-xu'u as untranslatable into FOL. We tend to forget that
lojban has two grammars: First order and higher order.

With this I rest my case on xa'a-xu'u. Thanks, xorxes, for many thought
provoking ideas, and thanks djan and lojbab for the lessons and the
parser, without which there would be nothing to talk about.  A parser
contribution is in the mail. These are veridical statements.

djer
====================================================================
xorxes:
>
>[I don't think it will be accepted. Sumti raising is one of Lojban's
>sacred cows and you are essentially proposing to do away with it.]
djer:
>> Try xa'a, you'll like it.
>xorxes:
>I don't dislike it in principle, because it always seemed to me that
>it is not clear when is it that object and event are allowed in the
>same slot and when they are not. Being of absolutist tendencies,
>(only as far as the definition of Lojban is concerned, not in real
>life, not even when I'm actually using Lojban :) I'd like that either
>always both were accepted, or never, or at least to have a reason for
>when they are or aren't, other than "it feels right".
>
>Jorge
>