Date: Wed, 7 Dec 1994 02:09:42 -0500
From: Logical Language Group <lojbab>
Message-Id: <199412070709.AA07813@access4.digex.net>
Subject: Re: TECH:  existential quantification
Cc: lojbab@access.digex.net, lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu
Status: RO
X-From-Space-Date: Wed Dec  7 02:09:56 1994
X-From-Space-Address: lojbab

>I'm not quite sure what point you're trying to make here.
>I may well be misinterpreting the word "state" in the description
>of {za'i}.  However one of it's connotations in English is
>state-of-affairs, which is a generalised situation as distinct
>from any particular event(s), and bears a close family relationship
>with "properties".  Some of us tend to think of {nu} as describing
>a discrete event, and we need some way of talking about the
>more abstract concept.  In particular, there's a danger that>in bridi like {mi djica lo nu broda}, we come up against the
>same old transparency/opacity problem w.r.t the event itself
>that we get with a more concrete object (e.g. {mi djica [tu'a]
>lo plise}), leading to a potentially infinite regress.
>
>It may well be that <{nu} vs. {za'i}> is not the answer to
>this one, but I'd like to know what is.

If I understanbd your terminology, then "discrete event" for which you are
associating with "nu" is rather too limiting.  I presume that discrete
events include point events (mu'e) for which it is relevant that there is
no "beginning" and no "end", since the event is not thought of as having
a time-based structure, or it is a "state" (za'i), in which it has a
beginning and an ending which are points (mu'e) and no substructure during the
duration.

But "nu" also includes events like "Activities" that do not start and end
instantaneously, but have a transition, and they have a structure of repeated
subevents within (activities of running have subevents which are individual
steps, and the transition from walking to running is not discrete put is a 
process (pu'e).  And processes also have substructure.

It is possible to look at events as discrete events or as structured 
complexities, and this is where the various members of NU and ZAhO come into
play.  The discrete event "the race" is almsot but not quite the same
thing as the process "running the race", the activity "running the race", or
the state "running the race".   These have event contours sokmething like
_|_, _/\_  _|||||_ and _|--|_, if my visual imagery in ASCII portrays anything
useful.  Having the OPTION to make this distinction is important, because
each represents a different way of looking at the same event.  It is an
English bias that we categorize most events as point events in the absence of
context.

lojbab