From LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Sat Mar 6 22:46:05 2010 Reply-To: Jorge Llambias Sender: Lojban list Date: Thu Dec 7 17:58:16 1995 From: Jorge Llambias Subject: Re: TECH: new cmavo "ju'e" X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu, jorge@minerva.phyast.pitt.edu To: John Cowan Status: OR X-From-Space-Date: Thu Dec 7 17:58:16 1995 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU Message-ID: la lojbab cusku di'e > >I don't see what the hidden ambiguity could be. > I don't either. We just have certain hunches. Indeed looking at this > proposal allowed Cowan to instinctively catch the BO prefix ambiguity in > MEX. Only THEN did he try to come up with a senence proving his hunch. Then you must be glad that I made my proposal. Otherwise the ambiguity might not have been found in time! :) > >How do you explain then that nobody has had any trouble understanding me > >when I use them? > I don't recall you using them at LogFest? I don't remember whether I used them or not, I guess I should have. > When since then have you attempted > to use them in speech? I was going to say that all the other Lojbanists in Pittsburgh understand me without any trouble when we get together to talk in Lojban, but pc might not approve of my abuse of existential (non)import. > That someone can eventually puzzle out the stuff you do in text on the > list proves nothing much. So your experience in being thrown off by Nick's dropping of {ku}s is valid proof but my experience of being understood when using {ba'ibo} is not? > I don;t even know if the stuff you write > parses or whther >I< can understand what you write, but I know it isn;t > trivial to do so. It mostly parses, I check it sometimes. The point is not whether it is trivial to understand but whether it is harder than the rest of the language. Understanding any Lojban text is nontrivial. > WE generally have NOT been putting "let usage decide" experiemnts into the > grammar unless we were convinced that even if the experiment failed it would > cause no problems. This proposal to let usage decide is risky, because if it > causes problems, it cannot be easily removed and the problems caused would be > of the type almost impossible to root out of the language. I don't see why it would be harder to remove this than anything else. > I have generally presumed that using a BAI in there rendered the ".e" as > not especially llogically relevant - .i.e. not necessarily expandible into > an ".ije" sentnce. ??!! And where does that leave all your arguments about the danger of tampering with the purity of the logical connectives? > But I could always mark with da'i or something similar > if I did not want to make the claim. It is easy to non-claim in Lojban. Unfortunately you don't give examples. Consider: la djan maubo la meris cu sutra John more-than Mary is fast. I don't want to say that John is fast and Mary is fast and John is faster than Mary, but only the comparative claim. Using {.e} and {da'i}: la djan emaubo da'i la meris cu sutra John and more-than (supposedly) Mary is fast. Is that really equivalent to the simple comparative claim? I find it much more nontrivial than my proposal. > > If it was up to me I would eliminate > >the guheks altogether. > It's not up to you. I know, that's why I have to be so insistent. It would be so much easier if I could just do it by decree... :) Jorge