Date: Sun, 15 Jan 1995 15:45:52 -0500 (EST)
From: jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU
Subject: Re: replies mainly re "ka"
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To: Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Reply-to: jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU
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And:
> We must distinguish "features" from "feature values":
>       feature      feature value
> (I)   colour       red, blue, green

Is "redness" a feature or a feature value? I suppose it's a feature,
and that is what I understand "le ka [ke'a] xunre" to mean.

> "Differ" needs a feature (e.g. size) as x3, not a feature value.

Agreed.

> I have been assuming that "property" means "red, blue, green, male,
> female, human, dog". Quite possibly I've misunderstood the intention.

I think it means "redness, masculinity, dogness, etc".

> I'm not saying that because ka and lihi are in the wrong selmaho
> there are certain things we are unable to say. Rather, I am saying
> that the logical structure expressed by ka and lihi is the logical
> structure of words in a different selmaho from NU.

I agree, but not everything in a given selmaho has the same logical
structure. For example, {goi} and {ne}, both in selmaho GOI, have
different logical structures. The selmaho only determines what syntactic
structures are allowed, not the logical structure.

> > There is no syntactic rule that constrains {ke'a} to be inside a
> > relative clause anyway, so there you have another nice source of
> > semantic garbage.
> This is easily rectified by a rule that defines what keha means when
> it is not within a relative clause (e.g. it is equivalent to a zohe).

If you can do that then there is no problem. In the case of {ka}, just
add a rule that if the bridi is all filled, so that there is no room
left for {ke'a}, then a {do'e ke'a} is assumed.

> > There is no such homomorphism. Semantic garbage abounds in syntactic
> > space.
> What are examples? If there are any, I doubt if they are to be found
> in the foundations of Lojban's/Loglan's design.

li pipaipi
ta goi ti
zi'o poi klama le zarci
vo'u zunle vo'o

I'm sure there are many more types. Of course, you can give rules to
interpret them, but then someone learning the language will need to
learn an extremely large set of extremely useless rules.

> > I had forgotten about {ni} in my classification! I never really
> > understood it, I think it's probably expressable as {le ka ...
> > xokau... }, but anyway, I'm not sure it has to be a singleton.
> When wouldn't it be a singleton? Are you thinking of "the amounts by
> which John and Mary are tall"? I think if you meant two separate
> amounts that should be expanded to "the amount by which John is tall
> and the amount by which Mary is tall", just as if you want to say
> "the propositions John is tall and Mary is tall" you need to
> expand to "The duhu John is tall and the duhu Mary is tall".

Ok, {ni} is a singleton, but it takes a lambda variable, like {ka}, so
that you can say {le ni ke'a clani}, which is keha's tallness, and
then {la djan frica la meiris le ni [ke'a] clani}.

(In terms of {ka} that would be {le ka ke'a clani la'u makau}.)

> > nu   (mu'e, pu'u, za'i, zu'o)
> > du'u (si'o)  (su'u = du'u taimakau...)
> > ka   (li'i)  (ni = ka ...xokau...)
> > jei (not really an abstraction, but often misused as jei = du'u xukau)
>
> I agree with the analysis, I think, except for the rendering of ni, since
> I'm opposed to ka being in NU.

Wherever {ka} is, {li'i} and {ni} should be there too. Perhaps I would
change to ni = ka la'umakau ...

> And "duhu taimakau" is more specific than
> (I presume) suhu is intended to be.

Probably, but it works for every use of {su'u} that I've seen (that is,
for each of the two uses :).

> Do you see how a set can come into being in stages? If so, you can see
> how a set can be a process.

No, I can see how its coming into being can be a process, but the set
itself is not the process, that would be sumti raising.

> {su'a} is a discursive: what is needed here is something that actually
> modifies the proposition expressed by the bridi, so not something in
> UI. I'm still not convinced that naho doesn't mean what I thought it
> did.

Let mi change to a simpler example. Say we want to say "in general,
elephants are grey".

You want to say:

        na'oku ro xanto cu grusi

To me, this says that if you look at the unspecified interval (let's
say it's ze'e, all time) then for a significant portion of the interval
you will find that every elephant is grey. In parts of the interval
this may not be true, but typically it will.

That is not what the English expression says. Probably the best translation
is {lo'e xanto cu grusi}.

Similarly, you can't say {na'oku ro skoto ...} if you don't mean each and
every Scotsman, at least in the parts of the interval where the relationship
holds.

But I still don't see the difference between {na'o} and {ta'e}, so I could
well be wrong about that.

Jorge