From cowan Sat Mar 6 22:55:32 2010 Subject: Re: {soi} To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu (Lojban List) From: cowan Date: Fri, 22 Sep 1995 12:45:37 -0400 (EDT) In-Reply-To: <199509220047.UAA24042@locke.ccil.org> from "ucleaar" at Sep 21, 95 08:20:35 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Content-Length: 1983 Status: OR X-From-Space-Date: Fri Sep 22 12:45:37 1995 X-From-Space-Address: cowan Message-ID: la .and. cusku di'e > Thanks for the explanation. Is the {dy}/{ri} difference that {dy} refers > to whatever its antecedent refers to, whereas {ri} repeats or reactivates > its antecedent (so the reference remains constant). Is this degree of > subtlety necessary? Yes, that was my intent. No, that degree of subtlety is probably not necessary, but somone may find a counterexample (porbably involving references to references) so I wanted to be prepared. > You say the grammar is > "soi [se'u]" > Is that 'sumti' in the syntactic or the semantic sense (i.e. is it > necessarily lexical)? I'm confused. Syntactically, any sumti can appear; if a sumti that doesn't refer to another sumti appears, the meaning is indeterminate. Not all sumti that refer to other sumti are lexical items; "le se go'i"; "le go'e", etc. > And is that 'reference' in the sense of 'referent' > or in the sense of 'cross-reference/pointer'? I'm not sure I can make this distinction. > As we are on this point, could you perhaps say whether x1, x2, x3 of {sumti} > and x1, x2, x3 of {bridi} refer to logicosemantic or to syntactic objects? > The definitions make it sound like they are logicosemantic, but in actual > usage they are almost always syntactic. > We should distinguish either between > sumti v. vlasui/sumvla > duu, bridi v. vlabri/brivla > (but this last standardly means selbrivla) > or > sibsui/sumsio v. sumti > duu, sibbri/brisio v. bridi > > The giuste supports the former. Actual usage supports the latter. I don't know what the actual usage in Lojban is these days. :-) I don't think that English usage is necessarily determinative: English is a notorious magpie borrower that perverts words from their original senses with abandon, e.g. Sp. >sombrero< 'hat' > Eng. >sombrero< 'Mexican-type hat'. -- John Cowan cowan@ccil.org e'osai ko sarji la lojban.