Message-Id: <199508112117.RAA07271@locke.ccil.org>
Date:         Fri, 11 Aug 1995 13:34:15 -0700
Reply-To: "John E. Clifford" <pcliffje@CRL.COM>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@PSUVM.PSU.EDU>
From: "John E. Clifford" <pcliffje@CRL.COM>
Subject:      negation
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
Status: OR

The Lojban "negation" concepts were developed in large measure from
reading a book called Negation (by someone whose name I forget now,
Horn?).  As a result we have not only sentential negation (contradiction)
but a number of predicate negations: complement (non-) and polar
opposite (large-small, e.g.) and, if I remember rightly, a reversing
process (make-unmake) and even a does-not-apply kind (for asking about
the size of beauty, for example, or as a response to "Have you stopped
beating your wife."  While some of these are dubiously negations, they
all are brought together by the name of the book and by some logical
relations among them, particularly ties-in with the unquestionable
negation: sentential.
        As for why we do not use these concept more often, the best answer
seems to be the old one that the gismu list is not a set of semantic
primes but a list of common and useful words which are at least enough
to define any prdicate we want.  Convenience, not strict definition, was
the goal (and, beside, "small" is probably clearer and more accurate than
"opposite of large").
pc>|83