Date: Fri, 22 Sep 1995 12:45:37 -0400
From: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
Subject: Re: {soi}
In-reply-to: <199509220047.UAA24042@locke.ccil.org> from <ucleaar@Sep>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
To: Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Reply-to: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
Message-id: <01HVOY875EPM000ZB2@FIPORT.FUNET.FI>
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Length: 2037
Lines: 50

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 <sumti-reference-1> <sumti-reference-2> [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.