Message-Id: <199509210735.DAA15472@locke.ccil.org>
Date:         Thu, 21 Sep 1995 00:38:40 +0100
Reply-To: ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
Subject:      direction, dimension
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
Status: OR

Jorge:
> > > In general, I haven't figured out yet how to deal with places
> > > that are defined as "in direction x" or "in dimension x".
> > > Any suggestions? How would you say {fe [inwardly]} anyway?
> > > {fe lo nerfaa (be le noa)}, or {fe lo nenri (be le noa)}?
> If {ta tinsa lo nenri}, does that mean that the object is in
> relationship {tinsa} with its insides? Maybe, I don't know.

I'd have thought so.

> As for {nerfa'a}, I'm not sure what it is. What kind of object
> fills the x1 of {farna}?

I think it should be a destination - the location x2 would reach
if x2 were moving.

> What exactly does {nenri} do here?

It tells you more about that destination.

> It's not the x2 of {farna}, and certainly not the x3, the
> "origin" of the direction.

Indeed not; it's the x1.

> > For dimensions there are lujvo from {cimde}.
> Well, {cimde} gives me similar difficulties. I don't really know
> what to put in the x1. How do you say "this is two-dimensional"?

{ti relmemselcimde}, {ti se cimde be re da}?

> > You know this, so there must be some problem I'm failing to see.
> It's just that I'm still not happy with my understanding of how
> to talk about space properties in Lojban (including the space
> tenses). I'm not saying that there is something wrong with it,
> just that I still haven't figured it out. (Time is much easier,
> being just one-dimensional and with a fixed direction.)

You're the physicist. You do everything in 13 dimensions. So you
should be able to sort it out. Or maybe that's why you can't.
After all, to me, 3 dimensional space seems perfectly straight-
forward. (Anything more than 3 is meaningless: Richard Kennaway
spent half a fruitless hour drawing me shadows of 4 dimensional
Necker cubes, & they all looked like nothing but elaborate
birdcages. N.B. This is not an invitation to Doug or John or
other clever people to essay a perlustration of my benighted
spatial bournes.)

---
And