From LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU Thu Nov 23 15:39:15 1995 Received: from VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM (vms.dc.lsoft.com [205.186.43.2]) by locke.ccil.org (8.6.9/8.6.10) with ESMTP id PAA22091 for ; Thu, 23 Nov 1995 15:39:09 -0500 Message-Id: <199511232039.PAA22091@locke.ccil.org> Received: from PEACH.EASE.LSOFT.COM (205.186.43.4) by VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.0a) with SMTP id 46F1CAAC ; Thu, 23 Nov 1995 16:29:09 -0400 Date: Thu, 23 Nov 1995 19:52:02 +0000 Reply-To: ucleaar Sender: Lojban list From: ucleaar Subject: Re: TECH: lambda and "ka" revisited To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu Status: OR Jorge: > > > > My objection to {nu} is that really the event is an argument of the > > > > bridi, so {jai fau broda} is truer to the meaning. > > > I think that it is a sufficiently distinct argument that the current > > > structure makes sense. In any case, your use of {fau} is pretty > > > non-standard, since BAIs don't usually behave like that. > > BAIs don't behave like what? > Take {gau} for instance. It comes from the selbri {gasnu}: "x1 makes > x2 happen". The sumti place that it adds will behave as the x1 of gasnu, > and the x2 of that gasnu will be the main event minus the gau place. > Now {fau} comes from {fasnu}, which doesn't have an x2 place, so all > it does is add a place for some event, with an unspecified relationship > to the main event. > You want to take that extra event as the main event itself, but it > need not be it (and in fact it has not been used like that.) I don't think the meaning of BAIs is that predictable. For example, {sepio} labels the tool, but one doesn't know who used it and what for and so on. I recognize that {fau} has been used differently from the way I use it, but I reason that (i) it's "official" meaning is not very precious, (ii) events are semantically sumti of the bridi - e.g. cimba is semantically a relationship between a kisser, a kissee and a kiss - so one wants a way to refer to them in a way that makes the syntax reflect the semantics, and (iii) this need is so ubiquitous that it calls for a nice short cmavo like {fau}. > > Contemporary formal semantics tends to treat the event as an argument > > of the predicate, so, e.g. KISS is a 3-place, with kisser, kissee, and > > event (the kiss) arguments. I cannot tell you the rationale for that, > > but I certainly agree with the upshot. > The way to get that is with the prefix nun-. {nuncinba} has exactly > the place structure you want. (But I doubt that it would be useful to > have that as the standard form.) Right. Good point. But it'll be a bit annoying to be prefixing virtually every gismu with nun-. > > I have feared {fau} means that. I think I shall just have to endeavour > > to override that by force of usage. After all, le lojbo cuntu needs > > the involvement of Seething-Rationalist-Types as well as pragmatists. > I'm a Seething-Rationalist-Pragmatist. I believe that pragmatics and > rationality go hand in hand, not one against the other. No way. Look at the political domain. All fudge and compromise and fence-sitting. No seethingly rigorous application of Principle. Maybe you mean you're a Seething-Rationalist-**Functionalist** - you think things are as good as they are useful. > > Ah, well ideally we now merge {ka} and {duu} and put the result in LU, > > while simultaneously moving {lu} into a new selmao that yields a > > selbri. > I'm not sure why you want {lu} to yield a selbri. What would be the > place structure of {lu mi broda le zarci}? Something like 'x1 is an > utterance of "mi broda le zarci"'? Yes. > Why is that better as a selbri? Because there are many such utterances. That's why {mlatu} is a selbri rather than a sumti - because there are many cats. I'm not replying to your questions about {sio}, because I no longer wish to defend it. I agree with your remarks re. "whether"/{jei}. > > {lii} was, I believe, introduced at the request of someone whoAd had > > their leg amputated but still experienced the leg. > Is {li'i} then about the human nervous system and how it can fool the > brain? Not necessarily. The point was that {da lii broda} doesn't entail {da nu broda}. Don't take that as a defence of the necessity of {lii}. > > I guess you could say {mi lifri lo dahi nu pada tuple mi} or > > {mi sizlifri liduu pada tuple mi}, where "sizlifri" means "have > > an experience that one would have if state-of-affairs x2 obtained". > Right, it's a matter of what predicate to use, not a matter for the > abstraction. It would be silly to use {li'i} only with {lifri} > anyway. Can it be used with some other predicate? {skicu}... But enough. We have assassinated the good character of NU, and henceforth NU shall skulk nefastously in the lazarets of our opprobrium. --- And