From LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Sat Mar 6 22:45:53 2010 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list Date: Fri Dec 15 09:04:23 1995 From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: RET: left factoring X-To: BARRETO%VELAHF@ECCSA.TR.UNISYS.COM X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan Status: OR X-From-Space-Date: Fri Dec 15 09:04:23 1995 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU Message-ID: >I'm facing the problem of "left factoring" sumti of the form >"le broda brode .e le broda brodi", I mean, something like >"le broda (brode .e brodi)". > >I don't know if it's possible at all. At first I tried >"le broda brode je brodi", which associates correctly, but doesn't >mean the same thing. Any ideas? (Please, NO metaphysical discussion >on connectives!) >.i ki'e .i co'o mi'e paulos. Unfortunately, with no metaphysics, we may not know what the problem is. It is true that the connected tanru is ambiguous and COULD mean something else, but it could also mean what you want. Let me put in some specifics to show this. le blanu mlatu .e le crino mlatu le blanu je crino mlatu le blanu mlatu .e le blanu gerku le blanu mlatu je gerku le blanu mlatu joi gerku le blanu co mlatu je gerku le blanu poi mlatu gi'e gerku le mlatu je gerku co blanu Note frist of all that at least in thsi example, it seems OK to combine the first terms with je. Why doesn't it seem to be OK to combine the second terms? Proabably because if we back-translate we get the feeling we may be saying the "joi" connected version rather than the je connected version. But that is why we allow both JOI and JA in tanru. The blue cats-and-dogs may indeed refer to the blue cats and the blue dogs - there is no necessaity that the referents be simultaneously both cats and dogs. In this case, we can use the co or poi phrases attached to blanu, but that is only assuming that the adjectival modification is of a certain and similar type - specifically that the original sumti meant le blanu je mlatu .e le blanu je gerku or should those be joi? But this does not work for le gerku zdani .e le gerku cidja And the latter example is why we as natlang speakers don't feel comfortable with any reasonable shortening of the two term expression - any formula seems like it could result in nonsense if the modifiers are of incompatible types. (The reason why I put in specifics is because you can't say whether broda and brode are compatible or not). That the shortening DOES work with je, is shown by the rearrangement with co at the bottom of my list - we don't feel put off by that formulation as much as by the non-co form (the dog-and-cat of type blue). Or maybe we are - because in translating it, I used the SINGULAR, which is not a valid assumption in Lojban. If you had translated it as (the dogs-and-cats of type blue) it doesn;t seem as much to imply the mixed connective. And sure enough this also works frontwards: (the blue dogs-and-cats) because when we pluralize the terms we find it harder in our minds to mix them - we don't envision some mixed entity with multiple cat tails and dog heads. There is one other connective that feels like it works for me, though the others may not like it so much: "ce". If you don't get too hung up on "ce" implying a set, then "le blanu gerku ce mlatu" certainly DOES NOT imply a mixing, but rather an unordered set somehow modified. So the only question is whether someone would insist that this is implying color attributes to sets - I don't think so. It is that ce explicitly avoids mixing whereas joi explicitly mixes, while je is a bit ambiguous. Does this confuses the issue enough for you? lojbab