Message-Id: <199602031354.PAA16569@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Sat, 3 Feb 1996 13:52:25 +0000
Reply-To: ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
Subject:      {poo}
To:         lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu
Content-Length: 1347
Lines: 28

Jorge [welcome back! I thought you were going to be gone for months, not
for a mere week or two]:
> We could turn it around and say that it is relevant only to the Irish:
>        la'e de'u cu vajni lei po'o se gugdrxeire
>        That is relevant to the Irish only.
> But that is cheating. We want to make the "except" claim. Since "except"
> seems to be much related to "only", I propose {po'onai} for that function:
>        la'e de'u cu nalvajni lei po'onai se gugdrxeire
>        That is irrelevant to the Irish only-not.
>        (i.e. that is irrelevant except to the Irish,
>        only-not to the Irish.)

Ivan:
> Shouldn't {po'onai} mean `not only' rather than `except'?

{poo} is in UI. This means it is a metacomment made by the speaker.
It will not serve for "only" and "except" that occur in subordinate
bridi e.g. "She believes that only birds fly", "She believes all
birds except penguins fly". This is just not a job for a UI.

For most uses of "only" and "except" there will be some workaround
using the standard logical machinery of quantifiers and connectives.
For Jorge's example, "For every x, that is irrelevant to x iff x is
not irish", "for every x, that is relevant to x iff x is irish", or
maybe "for every x, if that is relevant to x then x is irish",
depending on exactly what the claim is meant to be.

coo, mie And