Message-Id: <199511220024.TAA04956@locke.ccil.org>
Date:         Tue, 21 Nov 1995 19:13:53 -0500
Reply-To: Jorge Llambias <jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: Jorge Llambias <jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU>
Subject:      Re: TECH: lambda and "ka" revisited
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
Status: OR

And:
> I think that given my prenex proposals, I agree with Jorge that {kea}
> can and should do the job. I don't support these fancy subscripting
> conventions - or at least I think they shd be no more than conventions,
> violable without being ungrammatical.

I don't have a problem with that. Any subscripts you use will be
parser-grammatical anyway, whether they follow some convention or not.
Everyone can make up their own convention and produce grammatical text.

I think that what convention we chose, if any, is irrelevant. In real
texts multiple or embedded {ke'a}s are very rare, and you can tell
from context what is what in any case. (If not, it is probably better
to rephrase. Subscripts will only add to the confusion, be it with xe'u
or with ke'a). I totally agree with your prenex proposal, which is what
anyone would understand without there being a convention behind it.

> > > 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.)

> 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.)

> 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.

> 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"'? Why is that better as a selbri?

> > I don't really understand {si'o}.
> It's like a mental state-of-affairs. Not so much a way that the world
> is but a way that a mind is. For example, {da de sio ro snime cu xekri kei}
> could be true, even if {ro snime cu xekri} isn't.

You mean something like {da krici/pensi/jinvi/se xanri le du'u ro snime
cu xekri}? Why do we need a special abstraction for that?

> > > No, {sio} is good. It's a relationship between a proposition and a mind.
> > > Very useful.
> > Can you give an example of how it would be used? Is {mi pensi le du'u
> > do klama le zarci} different from {mi pensi le si'o do klama le zarci}?
> Well, the {duu} version means "pensive about a way the world is, or
> could be", while the {sio} version means "pensive about an idea in
> someone's mind". So they're totally different.
> I think lots of selbri whose x1 is necessarily sentient and volitional
> shd really have a sio x2, where x2 of sio = x1 of the selbri.

Please give an example! The x1 of {pensi} is sentient and volitional,
but I don't really see the point of singling out "someone's ideas" as
a special x2 for pensi.

> However, I must confess that {da de sio broda}} seems equivalent to
> {da sidbo le duu broda kei de}. In consequence I now think that no
> member whatever of NU should actually belong to NU.

I tend to agree, but given that things are as they are, just imagine
that {leka} and {ledu'u} are single cmavo and then they do what
you want them to do.

> > I'm not sure what you mean by your comment. If {jei} gives a truth value,
> > i.e. a number, unique or not, to a proposition, it _cannot_ be used as
> > "whether". A number is not an indirect question.
> Suppose we call the truth value of sentence (or proposition) S Tom. And
> suppose that in our metaphysics, Tom is the truth-value of no sentence
> but S. Then, I think, "I know Tom" is equivalent to "I know whether S".

You know Tom about S?

No, I think you are mingling the two meanings of English "to know":
"x1 knows x2 about dear old x3" vs. "x1 knows dear old x2".


> > Compare with the two uses of "where" as indirect question and as place
> > holder:
> >        I know where John went. (indirect question: I know
> >                                the answer to the question
> >                                "Where did John go?")
> >        I know the place where John went. (Place holder: He went to New York,
> >                                           and I know New York because
> >                                           I've been there.)
> > If I know that John went to New York, that means that I know where
> > John went, but not that I know New York.
> I see this. I'm saying that the distinction fades with examples like:
>
>     I know John's fingerprints.
>     I know what be-fingerprints John.
>
> because if you know John's fingerprints you'll know that they befingerprint
> John, so you'll know what befingerprints John.

Those two mean the same, but "what" is not acting as an indirect question
there but as a place holder: I know that, which be-fingerprints John.

If you interpret it as an indirect question, "I know what is it that
be-fingerprints John", then what you know may be that fingerprints
be-fingerprint John. All you know may be that John has fingerprints, but
you may not be able to recognize them.

> {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?

> 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?

Jorge