From - Wed Feb 21 14:25:41 1996 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 OAA18739 for ; Wed, 21 Feb 1996 14:41:54 -0500 Message-Id: <199602211941.OAA18739@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 0A2F86C1 ; Wed, 21 Feb 1996 14:04:54 -0500 Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 18:08:39 +0000 Reply-To: ucleaar Sender: Lojban list From: ucleaar Subject: re "except" etc. X-To: lojban list To: John Cowan Status: U X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 2456 pc: > Cripies! Will you all please get with the program. This is the > LOGICal language! when a question comes up, look at what logic > does FIRST. Logic has been dealing with "only" and "except" (and > their correspondents in most European and not a few Eastern > languages) for a couple of millennia. There may be an English > trick or two that will take some work, but the basics should be > available and YOU SHOULD USE THEM. This is a bit unfair. First, Jorge asked how to do "only" et al. preserving syntactic sumti-selbri structure (e.g. making "only birds fly" like "birds fly" rather than "all fliers are birds" or whatever). Second, Lojban already has a word glossed as "only", which - of all things - is in among the discursives. Turn your fire on that. For the record, before {poo} was added, I definitely remember pointing out that "only birds fly" can be rendered as "all fliers are birds", with the implication that no new device for "only" was necessary. Or do I mistake your intention? I understood you to be chiding, but maybe you are merely exhorting us to USE the logical apparatus rather than seek more familiar natural languagey locutions. If so, then I agree. > Yes, "only" is in quantifiers Not in Lojban it isn't. It is in among metalinguistic comments, in UI, not in PA. > and "except" is right close to it (indeed often in the same place, since > "only" and "none except" turn out to be about the same thing). And had > it right from about the beginning and could have given you short forms, > if he (or any of us) only (another sense) knew which of the _ro (lo) > broda_ forms were which. I don't see how. Even if I were granted my way about which ro-lo-broda forms mean what, I still wouldn't know how to say "only birds fly" using the form " bird cu fly". > The thought that it was a predicate (one that contains a quatifier yet) > is just perverse in a logical -- or lojbanical -- context. Why perverse? It is practicable, I think, as discussion has shown, even if it isn't worthwhile. > "Even" does involve something more and the analysis on that is pretty > good. A check in McCawley might be in order for some more details and > even that would not give a clear- cut solution to the question of what to > do in Lojban. I think it's clear that "even" should be rendered by a discursive, even if we don't know which discursive. coo, mie and