Message-ID: <343A4F69.7493@locke.ccil.org> Date: Tue, 07 Oct 1997 11:04:09 -0400 From: John Cowan Organization: Lojban Peripheral X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (WinNT; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Lojban List Subject: Re: Semantic names References: <199710070806.DAA22083@locke.ccil.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Status: RO Content-Length: 99999 la mrasfe cusku di'e: > I wonder > if there are any places where use of a semantically translated name > is not wholly interchangeable with a phonetic one for phoneme- > parsing reasons? There are three basic uses of names: as sumti, as vocatives, and stand-alone (or at the beginning of a text). As sumti, morphological and predicate names are fully interchangeable. As vocatives, it's vague whether "doi mrasfe" addresses someone whose predicate name is "mrasfe", or just uses "mrasfe" as a description of the addressee. Stand-alone names, whose semantics are extremely vague, must be morphological, but nobody needs to use this feature. -- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org e'osai ko sarji la lojban From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Tue Oct 7 12:07:58 1997 for ; Tue, 7 Oct 1997 12:07:49 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710071707.MAA13300@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Matthew Faupel Sender: Lojban list From: Matthew Faupel Subject: Re: Word? X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: message from Edward Cherlin on Mon, 6 Oct 1997 20:33:16 -0700 X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 372 > On another mailing list a request was made for a word meaning, "beating > the greasy spot on the ground where the dead horse used to be." I'm sure > our experts will have no trouble with this. :-) I think that: ze'u za'o na snada might be the correct (if boring) answer, given Lojban's general principle of avoiding metaphor :-) Cheers, Matthew From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Tue Oct 7 12:37:06 1997 for ; Tue, 7 Oct 1997 12:36:28 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710071736.MAA14406@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Matthew Faupel Sender: Lojban list From: Matthew Faupel Subject: Re: Word? X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 440 Hmmm... Think before you post. On reading my own posting, I note that a) a single word was asked for and not a phrase, and b) it should probably be "na'e snada" rather than "na snada" to get the proper implication that an attempt was made and failed, so my revised answer is thus: ze'urza'onalsnada This may still be wrong for a variety of reasons, but I'll leave it at that to avoid le nu mi ze'urza'onalsnada Matthew From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Tue Oct 7 13:24:20 1997 for ; Tue, 7 Oct 1997 13:24:05 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710071824.NAA16406@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: absieber@eos.ncsu.edu Sender: Lojban list From: Andrew Sieber Subject: Dvorak (& Lojban) X-To: Lojban list To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 3591 I've been typing w/ Dvorak for about two days now. I've managed to memorize the whole layout, but typing is still ridiculously slow. About the only word that flows naturally now is "the". I am continuously hitting wrong keys because I'm so familiar with qwerty. Chris Bogart wrote: > Its interesting how many Lojbanists > have experimented with Dvorak. It must be the same attitude that draws > us to the layout and the language. There's gotta be a better way of > doing things... I agree entirely. Lee Sau Dan wrote: > Perhaps you're right. I'm also addicted to Qwerty, although I know > switch to Dvorak would speed up my typing. The main problem maybe > that we cannot afford the *extra* time needed to train ourselves for > Dvorak. We've already got a reasonably good alternative. So, we're > unwilling to pay the cost for the switching, which brings benefits > which would be only marginal... As a full-time student, I have to write lots of papers, and I'm going to end up spending a LOT of time typing a couple of them because my Dvorak speed won't be up enough by the time they're due. I can't really afford the time needed either, but I'm doing it anyway. Qwerty is no longer an acceptable alternative for me. The time investment must be made at some point, and the sooner the better. Delaying only serves to add to the difficulty. You also mentioned that you have done qwerty-Dvorak keyboard conversions for X-windows on Linux. Would you email me instructions on how to do this? Thanks. Edward Cherlin wrote: > Switching to Dvorak after 30 years typing QWERTY was an amazing experience. > There was a kind of pain in the brain that I have never experienced > otherwise. I imagine that it also occurs in total immersion language > learning. [snip] > Each day after that, I was able to go a > little faster and a little longer, until some time in the fourth week I > didn't have to go back to QWERTY any more. This IS total immersion learning for me. I decided that when I started typing with Dvorak (which was two days ago), I was not going to use qwerty anymore. I'm not going to switch temporarily back to qwerty to type a couple papers that are due soon. I'll spend many hours typing what should only take half an hour to type if I have to. (I'm typing this message in Dvorak, and it's taken me over an hour so far! In qwerty I could have been finished in less than ten minutes.) I have read, and fear would be immensely true for me, that trying to retain qwerty skills is an immense burden on one's attempts to learn Dvorak. Seth Golub wrote: > Good luck. The first week is very frustrating, but it's worth it. No kidding! (About the first part.) I hope the latter proves true as well. Sorry to anybody who's annoyed that I'm using this mailing list for completely off-topic dialogue. I guess I ought to at least mention Lojban! Actually, I just remembered that there was something I wanted to ask: in English, completely different words are used to refer to physical phenomena and the units used to measure them. For example, the unit of measurement of electrical current is the ampere, and the unit for length or distance is the meter (or yard, etc). There are only a few exceptions, such as the volt, which measures voltage. How is this handled in Lojban? I assume that whatever name is used, the same base quantities are used that are used internationally, such as is the case for metric prefixes, where "kilto" means "kilo". --Andrew absieber@eos.ncsu.edu From drv.cbc.com!lcrocker@cbgate.cbc.com Tue Oct 7 19:20:54 1997 for ; Tue, 7 Oct 1997 19:20:49 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: Semantic names To: cowan@scotty.sys.drv.cbc.com Date: Tue, 7 Oct 1997 15:22:08 -0700 (PDT) From: "Lee Daniel Crocker" In-Reply-To: <199710071601.JAA22795@red.colossus.net> from "John Cowan" at Oct 7, 97 11:04:09 am Reply-To: Lee Daniel Crocker Organization: Piclab (http://www.piclab.com/) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] Content-Type: text X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1094 > > I wonder > > if there are any places where use of a semantically translated name > > is not wholly interchangeable with a phonetic one for phoneme- > > parsing reasons? > > There are three basic uses of names: as sumti, as vocatives, and > stand-alone (or at the beginning of a text). As sumti, morphological > and predicate names are fully interchangeable. As vocatives, it's > vague whether "doi mrasfe" addresses someone whose predicate name > is "mrasfe", or just uses "mrasfe" as a description of the > addressee. Stand-alone names, whose semantics are extremely > vague, must be morphological, but nobody needs to use this feature. But "doi la mrasfe" is grammatical and clear, isn't it? And on a related note, since things can be named with brivla, the word "cmene" can't be used specifically to describe those words-ending-in-consonants that are usually, but not exclusively, used for that purpose. Since "zo mrasfe cmene mi" is true, "le cmene" must be able to refer to "zo mrasfe". How about "me'evla" for the more specific word? co'o mi'e la mrasfe From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Wed Oct 8 11:58:09 1997 for ; Wed, 8 Oct 1997 11:58:08 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710081658.LAA10077@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: Dvorak (& Lojban) X-To: jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1307 > x1 is x2 kilograms in mass > >I don't really know what to do about the x3 of kilto. I would say, >for example > > li cinonono kilto li ci > 3000 is a thousand 3 > >but in what dimension? How is the x3 of kilto used? x1 is a thousand [1000; 1x10**3] of x2 in dimension/aspect x3 (default is units) le dacti cu kilto cimei lo grake leni marji The object is 1000 3-somes in grams in mass (Note that people sometimes use grams as a weight measurement instead of a mass measurement.) For a length, the x3 might be the specific direction/dimension that the length is measured. le dacti cu kilto cimei lo mitre leni sraji clani The object is 1000 3-somes in mitres in amount of vertical-length. (but you might also use width or depth in the x3) lojbab ---- lojbab lojbab@access.digex.net Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: ftp.access.digex.net /pub/access/lojbab or see Lojban WWW Server: href="http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/" Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me. From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Wed Oct 8 12:27:34 1997 for ; Wed, 8 Oct 1997 12:27:33 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710081727.MAA11019@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: book reminder X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 1277 There is now only around 3 weeks left inthe advance order period for the Lojban reference grammar. We've received over 75 paid orders, but at least another 50 books have been spoken for via email, but we have not yet received payment. I've been checking into account balances and over 60 people have balances in excess of $40, with around 150 people with some positive balance. I am still trying to clean up financial records so that I do not have all balances correct yet, but if you think you have a positive balance with LLG and would like to apply that balance to your purchase, feel free to send me email and/or specify in your actual order that you want your account balance applied to the order. See the Lojban WWW page or write me for a copy of the book announcement with price information. lojbab ---- lojbab lojbab@access.digex.net Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: ftp.access.digex.net /pub/access/lojbab or see Lojban WWW Server: href="http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/" Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me. From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Thu Oct 9 08:17:12 1997 for ; Thu, 9 Oct 1997 08:17:10 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710091317.IAA23245@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: George Foot Sender: Lojban list From: George Foot Subject: {le logjji batkyta'o morna} logical keyboard layouts X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 3299 coi rodo Firstly, is {batkyta'o} = button-board a sensible word for keyboard? It was the best I could find, but {tanbo} implies a plank sort of board. Perhaps {skamrkiborda}? Or is that just the lazy way out? ;) There was some interest recently in how appropriate the Dvorak layout is for Lojban typing. I was playing around last night and wrote a short program to assess how different keyboard layouts compare with one another for a given piece of text. Preliminary results seem to suggest that the Dvorak layout should still be the more comfortable, despite things which seem wrong, like having the ' key on the same hand as the vowels, and the H key having a central position. I haven't tried it on many Lojban texts yet (I only have two!), and naturally the results depend to a large extent on how the program is configured (e.g. how `bad' it thinks different finger movements are). The results for the Martin Luther King speech and Tikitiki-whatever were (lower numbers indicating more comfort): Qwerty Dvorak Lojban luther 123.45 80.42 65.92 tikitiki 126.96 78.18 68.75 The Lojban keyboard layout is a fictional one of my own invention; it is the same as the Dvorak layout but with the apostrophe key interchanged with the H key. Just this small change does seem to have made a big difference. This is probably the only change that could be made without disrupting people's typing too much; since the apostrophe sounds almost like an H anyway it's not that great a change IMHO. Of course, no OS supports it ;). It's encouraging that the figures in each case were so close; implying that these two texts use similar letter patterns perhaps. Incidentally, for a text in English (with some bits in C code) that I wrote: Qwerty Dvorak 123.31 46.27 This text was quite a bit longer, though. Assuming my program's doing a reasonable job, then, the Qwerty layout is just as bad for both languages, the Dvorak layout is better for both, but not as much better for Lojban as it is for English (which I expected, anyway). My {jbobatkymorna} is of course best for Lojban writing :). If anybody is interested in the program, you can download the C source code (very small, zipped) or a DOS binary (26k, also compressed) from this web page: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~mert0407/lojban/ I'll try to put some statistics for other documents on that page too, if I have time. The C source ought to compile on almost any C-capable system (Unix, Windows, DOS, etc), but the makefile will need modification for anything other than a DOS system using djgpp. It is a command line utility, which can read an input file, or stdin, outputting to an output file, or stdout, and can switch between keyboard types on the command line. Adding new keyboard layouts, or modifying existing ones for testing, is fairly trivial but requires a rebuild for each. Ditto for changing the scoring system. I'd be interested to hear any comments on these results, the scoring system, or feasibility of using a keyboard layout designed especially for Lojban writing. co'o mi'e djorj -- George Foot Merton College, Oxford From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Thu Oct 9 10:32:43 1997 for ; Thu, 9 Oct 1997 10:32:27 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710091532.KAA28710@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: bob@rattlesnake.com Sender: Lojban list From: bob@MEGALITH.RATTLESNAKE.COM Subject: Re: {le logjji batkyta'o morna} logical keyboard layouts X-To: george.foot@merton.oxford.ac.uk, lojban@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: (message from George Foot on Thu, 9 Oct 1997 12:58:33 +0100 (BST)) X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1258 Firstly, is {batkyta'o} = button-board a sensible word for keyboard? You are asking if the following makes sense for what you want: a button/knob/[handle] type of board/plank [3-dimensional long flat rectangle] Note the use of the phrase `type-of'; this is almost always a good way to translate a modifier/modified relationship. Also, I find it helpful to incorporate the complete meaning in my English, not just the one-word gloss. For `button', you also have `knob' and `handle'; do those words suggest what you want? Do you think of a keyboard as a 3-dimensional long flat rectangle or as a curved rectangular piece? The definition you gave reminds me of the control panel of a nuclear power plant I once visited (the type of control panel the safety people rightly criticise, since an operator is more likely to pull the wrong knob than if the panel is more a mimic board). Or do you think of the keyboard by what it is used for, rather than its shape. What about keyboards that are not rectangular (I have seen them)? Best wishes. -- Robert J. Chassell bob@rattlesnake.com 25 Rattlesnake Mountain Road bob@ai.mit.edu Stockbridge, MA 01262-0693 USA (413) 298-4725 From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Thu Oct 9 10:54:22 1997 for ; Thu, 9 Oct 1997 10:54:21 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710091554.KAA29516@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: bob@rattlesnake.com Sender: Lojban list From: bob@MEGALITH.RATTLESNAKE.COM Subject: Re: {le logjji batkyta'o morna} logical keyboard layouts X-To: george.foot@merton.oxford.ac.uk X-cc: lojban@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: (message from George Foot on Thu, 9 Oct 1997 12:58:33 +0100 (BST)) X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1262 This is probably the only change that could be made without disrupting people's typing too much; since the apostrophe sounds almost like an H anyway it's not that great a change IMHO. Of course, no OS supports it ;). GNU/Linux supports different keyboards. Indeed, it already supports not only the regular Dvorak layout but also the left and right Dvorak layouts for one handed typists. This is useful both for amputees and for people who need to control a second device while typing. All in all, my system has 57 different layouts in its `keytables' directory, starting with German Amiga layout and ending with a US layout. (I use the `emacs2' layout, which turns the caps lock into a control key and does other useful things.) It should not be hard to adapt /usr/share/keytables/dvorak.map to your newly invented /usr/share/keytables/lojban.map (See http://www.debian.org/ for info on GNU/Linux. Since the software is sold competitively, you can buy multi-gigabyte distributions in the US on CD-ROM for under $15.) -- Robert J. Chassell bob@rattlesnake.com 25 Rattlesnake Mountain Road bob@ai.mit.edu Stockbridge, MA 01262-0693 USA (413) 298-4725 From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Thu Oct 9 12:13:44 1997 for ; Thu, 9 Oct 1997 12:13:41 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710091713.MAA01709@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Carl Burke Sender: Lojban list From: Carl Burke Subject: Opinions on a short, silly translation X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 1018 A while ago on rec.arts.tv.mst3k.misc there was an attempt to translate the immortal words of Crow T. Robot ("Bite me, it's fun!") into Latin. Well, I put the result in my .sig file ("Morde me, iuvat"), but was recently told by someone else that it sounded more like "Kill me, it helps." This wasn't really what I had in mind. :) Since I don't know Latin anyway, I thought it would be more appropriate for me to put a Lojban translation of said phrase into my .sig. The core bridi (ko batci mi) seems clear, but I'm not entirely sure how to encapsulate the rest of it. What I came up with was le nu ko batci mi kei cu zdile or le nu ko batci mi kei cu kukte. I might be able to use an attitudinal, but the thing/things which find the biting to be fun are intentionally unspecified in the English. I like the 'kukte' version because of the implied association with food, but it may not be quite appropriate. Any opinions or comments from the group? -- Carl Burke cburke@mitre.org From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Thu Oct 9 13:25:59 1997 for ; Thu, 9 Oct 1997 13:25:34 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710091825.NAA04354@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: swo@EXECPC.COM Sender: Lojban list From: Thom Quinn Subject: newbie to lojbann with questions X-To: LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 297 Hello, I am new to Lojban (and Loglan). I am wondering if someone could tell me the main differences between these sister languages. Also, which one would work best for human speakers? Which one would work best for human to computer speaking (orally and typing). Thanks! Thom Quinn From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Fri Oct 10 18:57:03 1997 for ; Fri, 10 Oct 1997 18:55:56 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710102355.SAA05740@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Chris Bogart Sender: Lojban list From: Chris Bogart Subject: Re: Dvorak (& Lojban) X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <199710092325.RAA05443@indra.com> Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 703 On Fri, 3 Oct 1997, JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS wrote: > >A short object will have a small amount of > >longness, and sure enough this corresponds to length. > > The trouble with this is that length is objective, while longness > is subjective. A not very long river may have greater length > than a very long road, for example. So here amount of longness > would seem to go against length. I think this apparent paradox isn't because clani is subjective, but because le'e dargu le'e rirxe cu frica leni te clani ka'u. The subjectivity comes from speaker and listener assuming together that the x3's will be different, not from any necessary subjectivity inherent in clani. co'o mi'e kris From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Fri Oct 10 10:19:30 1997 for ; Fri, 10 Oct 1997 10:19:23 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710101519.KAA19729@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Robin Turner Sender: Lojban list From: Robin Turner Subject: length X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 3923 We seem to be getting down to one of those classic problems in reference / categorisation - "long" relative to what? Classical set theory regards the adj.+noun set as the intersection of the set referred to by the adjective and the set referred to by the noun; thus "pink elephant" would be the intersection of the set of pink things with the set of elephants. This does not work for scalar adjectives, however, since "small galaxy" is not the intersection of the set of small things with the set of galaxies, but something like "the subset of galaxies which are small relative to the normal size of a galaxy". With "long", we therefore have two ideas: long as in "2 metres long", and long as in "longer than the average / what you'd expect." "Length", I think, only refers to the first sense. Robin >>At 21:04 03/10/97 -0300, you wrote: >>> cu'u la lojbab >>> >All measureable objects have an amount of longness (which may >>>>also be identical to their amount of shortness). >>> >>>I'm not sure I'm understanding what you mean. Could you >>>translate into Lojban? I suppose you are not saying that: >>> >>> ro mitre cu ckaji le ka clani >>> Every measurable object has the property of being long. >>> >>>That, to me, is the same as saying: >>> >>> ro mitre cu clani >>> Every measurable object is long. >>> >>>>A short object will have a small amount of >>>>longness, and sure enough this corresponds to length. >>> >>>The trouble with this is that length is objective, while longness >>>is subjective. A not very long river may have greater length >>>than a very long road, for example. So here amount of longness >>>would seem to go against length. We could say: >>> >>> le dargu cu mutce le ka clani >>> The road is much in being long. >>> >>> le rirxe cu toltce le ka clani >>> The river is little in being long. >>> >>> le rirxe le dargu cu zmadu le ka mitre >>> The river is more than the road in length. >>> >>>> I am not sure >>>>whether the amount of shortness increases or decreases with length, but it >>>>would seem likely to be inverse of length %^). >>> >>>For me they are independent concepts. Measurable objects have >>>length, by definition. In Lojban that sounds even more like a truism: >>> >>> ro mitre cu ckaji le ka mitre >>> >>>but they don't necessarily have shortness or longness. These are >>>subjective properties that depend much on the context. I wouldn't >>>use objective words like {kilto} with subjective words like {clani} >>>or {tordu}, unless it's metaphorical. Something like: >>> >>> ti ta kilto le ka clani >>> This is a thousand times that in longness. >>> >>>is akin to something like: >>> >>> ti ta kilto le ka melbi >>> This is a thousand times that in beauty. >>> >>>Both are unverifiable subjective statements. On the other hand, >>>you can check, by measuring, a statement like: >>> >>> ti ta kilto le ka mitre >>> This is a thousand times that in length. >>> >>>(A more precise wording would be: >>> >>> ti ta kilto le ka ke'a mitre makau >>> This is a thousand times that in how many >>> meters they measure. >>> >>>or whatever new cmavo was created to replace ke'a in such >>>places. Also {makau} can be replaced with {li xokau}.) >>> >>> I know that the word "long" is sometimes used in an objective sense >>>in English, as in "how long is this object?", but I don't think that the >>>Lojban word {clani} can be used to translate the objective sense >>>of English "long". It only has its subjective sense. >>> >>>co'o mi'e xorxes >>> >>> From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Fri Oct 10 14:02:44 1997 for ; Fri, 10 Oct 1997 14:02:37 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710101902.OAA26811@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: clani X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 2372 >>>> I know that the word "long" is sometimes used in an objective sense >>>>in English, as in "how long is this object?", but I don't think that the >>>>Lojban word {clani} can be used to translate the objective sense >>>>of English "long". It only has its subjective sense. >>>> >>>>co'o mi'e xorxes You of course are insisting on talking about le ka clani, and not le ni clani. ni abstractions at least suggestr the possibility of being objectively measureable. And clani, which has a measurement standard in x3 is about as object as they come, barring relativistic effects. >>>>I'm not sure I'm understanding what you mean. Could you >>>>translate into Lojban? I suppose you are not saying that: >>>> >>>> ro mitre cu ckaji le ka clani >>>> Every measurable object has the property of being long. >>>> >>>>That, to me, is the same as saying: >>>> >>>> ro mitre cu clani >>>> Every measurable object is long. >>>> >>>>>A short object will have a small amount of >>>>>longness, and sure enough this corresponds to length. da'a mitre cu ckaji le ka clani fi da Every measureable object (except the shortest) has the property of being long with respect to some standard. In the case of lo mitre, we have a fairly objectove standard by whioch we can measure le ni mitre - the degree of longness. Now for an object that is short, the degree of longness will be small. Also le jei clani will not exactly correspond to le ni clani since an object can have measureable lengthg and still not be significantly long with respect to the standard, and an object that is long(er) compared to the standard has a length greater than "1". It was concepts like "length" that "ni" was invented to express. I think it works with the current place structure. It did not with JCB's original place structure for "clani" (which was x1 is longer than x2) lojbab ---- lojbab lojbab@access.digex.net Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: ftp.access.digex.net /pub/access/lojbab or see Lojban WWW Server: href="http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/" Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me. From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Fri Oct 10 16:55:36 1997 for ; Fri, 10 Oct 1997 16:55:34 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710102155.QAA00203@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Lee Daniel Crocker Sender: Lojban list From: "Lee Daniel Crocker (none)" Organization: Piclab (http://www.piclab.com/) Subject: Re: clani X-To: Lojban Group To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <199710101803.LAA31914@red.colossus.net> from "Logical Language Group" at Oct 10, 97 01:29:55 pm X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1320 > It was concepts like "length" that "ni" was invented to express. > I think it works with the current place structure. It did not with > JCB's original place structure for "clani" (which was x1 is longer than x2) Though Jorge wasn't talking about "ni", I think his point is still good: the abstract property of "length" is "ka mitre", and "length" of something (a measure) is "ni mitre". "ni clani", or "amount of longness" is different. A (subjectively) long thing has "some"; a subjectively short thing has none. A subjectively very long thing has a lot. Similarly, a long thing has no amount of shortness, and a very short thing has a lot of shortness. Otherwise, you have the counter-intuitive result of: ta na clani .i le ni clani cu cmalu I'm with Jorge; both the short thing and the long thing have both "ka mitre" and "ni mitre", but the short thing has /neither/ "ka clani" nor "ni clani". Something with very little "ni clani" is still "clani", just not very much so. -- Lee Daniel Crocker "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Fri Oct 10 20:51:11 1997 for ; Fri, 10 Oct 1997 20:50:51 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710110150.UAA08988@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Lee Daniel Crocker Sender: Lojban list From: "Lee Daniel Crocker (none)" Organization: Piclab (http://www.piclab.com/) Subject: Re: clani X-To: Lojban Group To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <199710110008.RAA31401@red.colossus.net> from "JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS" at Oct 4, 97 08:45:28 am Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1769 > The reason I prefer not to talk about ni is that I never fully > understood what it's for. I'm confortable using ka, nu and du'u, > but I don't know about the other "abstractors", maybe because > the first three are the only ones that have been used > significantly. > > Where would one use {ni mitre} for example? Isn't the measure > {se mitre}? I know what {le ka mitre li ci} means: The property > of measuring three meters. But what does {le ni mitre li ci} mean? {mitre} is a special case because it already has a place for measurement, so I might agree that {le ni mitre} is just the same thing as {le se mitre}. But something like {ninmu} makes it more useful: {mi nelci le ni ti ninmu} "I like the amount-of she is-a- woman/I like her degree of femininity". > >longness" is different. A (subjectively) long thing has "some"; a > >subjectively short thing has none. A subjectively very long thing > >has a lot. Similarly, a long thing has no amount of shortness, and > >a very short thing has a lot of shortness. > > I agree, but I would say it with ka rather than ni: > le clani cu ckaji le ka clani > le tordu cu claxu le ka clani > le clatce cu mutce le ka clani That seems OK, but for something like {ninmu}, {ka} and {ni} are very different: {mi nelci le ka ti ninmu} expresses not that I like the degree of her femininity, but merely the existence of it. -- Lee Daniel Crocker "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sat Oct 11 05:38:44 1997 for ; Sat, 11 Oct 1997 05:38:43 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710111038.FAA27797@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: clani X-To: lee@piclab.com X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1541 >Though Jorge wasn't talking about "ni", I think his point is still >good: the abstract property of "length" is "ka mitre", and "length" >of something (a measure) is "ni mitre". "ni clani", or "amount of >longness" is different. A (subjectively) long thing has "some"; a >subjectively short thing has none. A subjectively very long thing >has a lot. Similarly, a long thing has no amount of shortness, and >a very short thing has a lot of shortness. > >Otherwise, you have the counter-intuitive result of: > > ta na clani >--More-- > .i le ni clani cu cmalu > >I'm with Jorge; both the short thing and the long thing have both >"ka mitre" and "ni mitre", but the short thing has /neither/ "ka >clani" nor "ni clani". Something with very little "ni clani" is >still "clani", just not very much so. I will disagree because "tordu" != "na clani". The nature of short things is that, by a different standard, they could be long things. Now if you fill in a very large standard, even a "long" object will noy be "clani" with respect to that object. lojbab ---- lojbab lojbab@access.digex.net Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: ftp.access.digex.net /pub/access/lojbab or see Lojban WWW Server: href="http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/" Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me. From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sat Oct 11 05:45:04 1997 for ; Sat, 11 Oct 1997 05:45:03 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710111045.FAA27910@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: clani X-To: jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1501 >Lee: >>Though Jorge wasn't talking about "ni", I think his point is still >>good: the abstract property of "length" is "ka mitre", and "length" >>of something (a measure) is "ni mitre". > >The reason I prefer not to talk about ni is that I never fully >understood what it's for. I'm confortable using ka, nu and du'u, >but I don't know about the other "abstractors", maybe because >the first three are the only ones that have been used >significantly. > >Where would one use {ni mitre} for example? Isn't the measure >{se mitre}? I know what {le ka mitre li ci} means: The property >of measuring three meters. But what does {le ni mitre li ci} mean? I think (or at least hope) he meant ka clani and ni clani rather than ka mitre and ni mitre. I cannot express, nor really soundly grasp in my mind "ni mitre". I would not equate it to se mitre. There mighyt be some usable semantics if one were to use nu mitre to quantify a part of the mass "loi mitre." but since i am just groping for this, I will nto defend it. lojbab ---- lojbab lojbab@access.digex.net Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: ftp.access.digex.net /pub/access/lojbab or see Lojban WWW Server: href="http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/" Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me. From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sat Oct 11 11:48:24 1997 for ; Sat, 11 Oct 1997 11:48:15 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710111648.LAA05562@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Chris Bogart Sender: Lojban list From: Chris Bogart Subject: Re: Dvorak (& Lojban) X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <199710110025.VAA26242@roble.intermedia.com.ar> Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1938 On Sat, 4 Oct 1997, JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS wrote: > cu'u la kris > >I think this apparent paradox isn't because clani is subjective, but > >because le'e dargu le'e rirxe cu frica leni te clani ka'u. > > Why {ni} there? I would say: > > le'e dargu le'e rirxe cu frica le ka ke'a clani fi makau > Roads and rivers differ in respect to what they are long. Yes, that's better. I'm out of practice. But I would think that using ni instead of ka would emphasize that you're talking about a quantitative difference between the lenths of two reference measuring-sticks, rather than just the fact that the two sticks are not identical. > I agree, yes. But what te clani do we use to say that some river is > kilto some road in length? Could be meters, or the length of time required to navigate it, or something else that should be clear in context. Or I suppose you could even use different te clani when making pseudo-mathematical comparison between abstractions: "he's twice as stupid as the world is round". The thing being compared here (some assumed equivalence relation between IQ and variability of curvature) is even more absurd than using inverse meters as a measure of shortness, but both can be imagined. > And why should it matter whether the > river or the road are long or short if we are just comparing their > objective lengths? Longness and objective length are not so unrelated in my mind. One is a quality and one is a measure, but I guess I think of "ni" and "ka" as ways of converting between the two. "ni clani fi le mitre" ought to be about the same as "mitre", and "ka ke'a zu'i zmadu le mitre" should be similar to "clani" (although I think I'm messing up levels of abstraction and place structures...) I agree then when speaking of objective lengths it would be more straightforward to use mitre than some construction involving clani. co'o mi'e kris From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sun Oct 12 01:54:14 1997 for ; Sun, 12 Oct 1997 01:54:05 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710120654.BAA25171@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Chris Bogart Sender: Lojban list From: Chris Bogart Subject: Re: Dvorak (& Lojban) X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <199710120311.VAA05677@indra.com> Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2333 On Sun, 5 Oct 1997, JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS wrote: > cu'u la kris > > Or I suppose you could even use > >different te clani when making pseudo-mathematical comparison between > But I have no problem in using {ka/ni clani} like that! As long as it is > clear > that you are being pseudo-mathematical. To say that something is twice > as clani as something else, you need that both things be clani, and you > don't need that one have twice the length of the other. OK. I tend to lose track of what positions we started with in these long threads... > > "ni clani fi le mitre" ought to be about the > >same as "mitre", > > Here we disagree. For example, a 1 cm object is mitre be li pinopa, > but it is not clani fi le mitre (it is not long with respect to a 1m thing). > Why would you say that something that is not long with respect to > a 1m thing has some amount of being long with respect to the 1m thing. With ka the terclani may be used for strict longer/shorter comparison, but with ni I would think it should be used as "1.0" on a real-valued scale. "ka clani le mitre" means "Whether it's longer than a meter", and "ni clani le mitre" means "How long it is, compared to a meter". In English, and I presume most or maybe all other natlangs, we have this regular way of transforming a binary statement about a quality into a quantitative one. "Whether he is tall" -> "How tall he is" "Whether he is smart" -> "how smart he is" "Whether he is inept" -> "how inept he is". The latter can interpreted quantitatively when it makes sense (as with tallness), or by comparison or example when numbers are too hard to assign (as with ineptitude). This seems sensible to me, it could be a useful interpretation of the ka/ni distinction. "ka" = whether, "ni" = how/to what degree. My computer screen can appear "a little too blue" without me actually classifying any of the colors on it as "blue". This parallels your example and is exactly how the reference grammar explains the difference between ka blanu and ni blanu. Is it wrong to use ni blanu to refer to intensity of blue light in a color mix, when the mix itself isn't blue? I can't think of a better use for "ni", and I can't think of any contradiction or inelegancy that would come from using it this way. Chris From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sun Oct 12 19:48:29 1997 for ; Sun, 12 Oct 1997 19:47:55 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710130047.TAA29695@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Chris Bogart Sender: Lojban list From: Chris Bogart Subject: ka/ni kama X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <199710121823.MAA24499@indra.com> Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 1717 On Sun, 5 Oct 1997, JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS wrote: > >This seems sensible to me, it could be a > >useful interpretation of the ka/ni distinction. "ka" = whether, "ni" = > >how/to what degree. > > Yes, that's one of the ways "ni" is used. Just as with {jei}, {ni} > has two meanings: its official definition meaning, and its usage > meaning. According to their definition, {jei} is a truth value > and {ni} is an amount. According to usage, they are indirect > questions, {jei} is "whether" and {ni} is "how much/to what degree". > Because of this confusion I prefer to avoid them, and use > {xukau} for "whether" and "la'u makau" for "to what degree". Setting jei aside for a minute, could you give an example of the two uses of "ni" and how they conflict? I don't understand the distinction. Maybe a sentence whose interpretation would be ambiguous because of the two usages? > Once one of the two meanings has been chosen, I still don't > think that something that is not broda can have some "ni broda". I believe people sometimes see ghosts, but I don't believe ghosts really exist. So I would say {de li'i da pruxi} but {da na pruxi}. I would like to be able to say something can have an extent of being long, without being long, in a perfectly parallel construction: {de ni da clani} but {da na clani}. The existence of the abstraction equals the truth value of the thing abstracted only in the special cases of nu, ka, and jei. It doesn't relate at all with si'o, su'o, or li'i, so the "rule" that ni is bending when it assigns values to non-broda is not really a rule of abstractors at all, but an incorrect generalization based on the behavior of ka. co'o mi'e kris From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sun Oct 12 04:20:59 1997 for ; Sun, 12 Oct 1997 04:20:30 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710120920.EAA05833@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: Dvorak (& Lojban) X-To: jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2498 >The same happens with "longer". Can you say that one >thing is longer than another when you wouldn't say that >either of them is long? In English, yes. In Lojban, you >shouldn't use {clani} to translate "longer". We should >rather use tremau: zmadu fi le ka mitre. I'm not quite managing to keep up with the discussion in real time, but spotting this, I see a key point. "tremau" to me isn't zmadu fi le ka mitre which I would take as being "more displaying the property of being measured in mitres" or thus "more measureable in mitres" - probably true of things at the macro level than of interstellar distances or atomic ones, and of course more true of daistances than weights. tremau in not "longer". clanymau should be "longer", and we then beg the question of ni because we disagree whether it is "zmadu fi le ni/ka clani". >But I have no problem in using {ka/ni clani} like that! As long as it is >clear >that you are being pseudo-mathematical. To say that something is twice >as clani as something else, you need that both things be clani, and you >don't need that one have twice the length of the other. I think here again, I disagree. Two things need not be clani to have ni clani. Just as two things need not be blanu to have ni blanu. Something zirpu is zmadu fi leni blanu than something xekri, and it depends on your color theory as to whether something blabi or zirpu is zmadu fi leni blanu. Note that there is more than one unit of measure involved in ni blanu - hue, and saturation are both factors. Butt there is no single measurement unit corrresponding to mitre for length that applies to amounto of blueness. Yet we certainly can tal;k about things that have more blue in them without saying that they ARE blue. Now if you want to say that something zirpu is blanu because it has ni blanu, you can try to convince those around me (I often call things that are zirpu, "blanu" because I respond more tot he blueness component of the color than to the redness/purpleness). lojbab ---- lojbab lojbab@access.digex.net Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: ftp.access.digex.net /pub/access/lojbab or see Lojban WWW Server: href="http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/" Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me. From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sun Oct 12 04:58:13 1997 for ; Sun, 12 Oct 1997 04:58:12 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710120958.EAA06190@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: HACKER G N Sender: Lojban list From: HACKER G N Subject: Re: LE and VOI X-To: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS X-cc: Lojban List To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <0EH100JEQIZBQR@newcastle.edu.au> Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1531 On Sat, 20 Sep 1997, JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS wrote: > cu'u la djef > > We can't express specificity and veridicality, but we can > >expres non-specificity and NON-veridicality! > > We can express specificity and veridicality in several ways: > > le mlatu noi mlatu cu blabi > The cat, which btw really is a cat, is white. > > ro mlatu poi mi fi ke'a tavla cu blabi > Each of the really-is-a-cat that I'm talking about are white. Yes, yes, I KNOW that. It's implicit in my first letter to And Rosta of September 24. My example was actually a simple "le mlatu cu mlatu". The point is that these expressions are too clumsy unless you mean to make a point of stating both specificity and veridicality at once. A casual utterance like "le mlatu" or "lo mlatu", which is what 90% of human communication calls for, DOES imply a certain forced choice. Similarly, you can leave number unspecified in English by saying things like "person(s)", but this is too clumsy for casual utterances as well. People like to say that English forces certain choices, but Lojban also forces choices of its own. > > but I don't see any need to stress that we really are talking > about a real cat, since that will be the default assumption. > Context has to clearly indicate otherwise for {le mlatu} to > refer to something that is not a cat. Well, I agree with you, and that's why I disagree with using "lo" to mean "the". It's clumsy and confusing. Regards, Geoff From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sun Oct 12 05:08:54 1997 for ; Sun, 12 Oct 1997 05:08:54 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710121008.FAA06294@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: HACKER G N Sender: Lojban list From: HACKER G N Subject: Re: na`e X-To: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS X-cc: Lojban List To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <0EH100JESIZGQR@newcastle.edu.au> Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1632 On Sat, 20 Sep 1997, JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS wrote: > >> > (1) su'o bu'a poi na vreta zo'u le mlatu cu bu'a le stizu > >> > For some which is not "vreta", the cat the chair. > >> > > >> > I think {su'o bu'a poi na vreta} really means something else, but > >> > that's a different story which I'm not sure we want to get into. > >> > >> For "poi" read "cei", which makes everything fine. > > > >But if "bu'a" means "some selbri 1", then how can it be assigned to a > >specific selbri without "poi"? I thought "cei" was for assignable > >pro-bridi - which "bu'a" isn't - and "poi" was for relative clauses - > >which are one of the few ways you can restrict the scope of a logically > >quantifiable existential pro-bridi. > > Quantifiable pro-bridi are an abomination on the language. Ha, ha, ha! Okay. Would you like to explain that a little more? :) >Fortunately > they aren't needed. Here's a way of doing it with ordinary quantification, > even if it does take a few more words: > > su'o da su'o de poi na zo vreta zo'u > da de bridi le mlatu ku ce'o le stizu ije da jetnu > > There is some x, and there is some y which is not "lies on", such that: > x is a predication with selbri y and arguments (the cat, the > chair), > and x is true. Ooh, I think I'd prefer the previous sentence for its conciseness. This one is technically correct, but hideous. Fortunately for ordinary users, I don't think it should be necessary to express this particular concept to this level of precision in any case. Geoff From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sun Oct 12 05:30:03 1997 for ; Sun, 12 Oct 1997 05:29:56 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710121029.FAA06434@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: HACKER G N Sender: Lojban list From: HACKER G N Subject: Re: RV: na'e entails na? X-To: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS X-cc: Lojban List To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <0EH100JEVIZIQR@newcastle.edu.au> Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 3377 On Sat, 20 Sep 1997, JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS wrote: > Ok, once again I have been persuaded by And to change my > mind. My position now is that na'e by itself does not entail na. > It only does so when the selbri in question partitions its domain > into exclusive regions (I try to explain what I mean by this below). > > >For example, everyone is either citizen of France or citizen of > >some other country. [NB INCLUSIVE OR] I want to describe > >the latter group as "na`e fraso zei selgugde" > [...] > > but will not be > >able to if everyone bar me gets their way! > > I now agree with your position, as long as it is clear that {na'e broda} > asserts not just any relationship other than broda. It must claim that a > relationship from a very reduced group holds among the arguments. > For the case of fraso, the relationships that may hold can be glico, > dotco, spano, brito, etc, but not for example ropno, since {ko'a ropno} > does not allow us to conclude that {ko'a na'e fraso}. In the case of > glico we cannot have brito as one of the possible "others", and so on. That's fair enough, because it is consistent with the original intention of "na'e" to imply a scale. In this case, the scale must be sensibly construed so that "na'e" actually says something interesting. However, this interesting statement need not in itself entail "na" - which is itself an interesting conclusion! So subject to that proviso, I agree with you too, And. There, now you shouldn't feel so picked on! ;) > > How this very restricted group of > relationships is selected is > the > difficult part, and probably very context dependent. I agree, which is probably why the relationship between "na'e" and "na" wasn't covered in clear detail in the refgramm. >In many cases > the domain of arguments gets partitioned into exclusive regions > by the predicates, and then na'e does entail na. For example, > taking {zmana'u} to mean "x1 is positive", then {ko'a na'e zmana'u}, > "k is non-positive", does entail {ko'a na zmana'u}, because the only > possibilities left are that k is negative or that k is zero. All other > relationships that may be true of ko'a are irrelevant. Yes, and moreover I think you can consider this case a subset of the abovementioned cases. It simply falls at one end of extremity along a continuum of restricted relations that make meaningful claims that pertain to a relation with a scalar negation. > > With this strong restriction, I think there isn't really that much of > a distance between the strong and weak forms of na'e. In many > cases it makes no difference which one we choose. I prefer the > weak form because, as And pointed out, the strong form can be > easily obtained with an end-of-bridi naku, whereas the weak > form cannot. Except that I think the issue is made obsolete by the fact that both restrictions can be properly related to each other along the continuum described above, a third unifying view, which has the positive claim associated with "na'e" logically related to the scalar-negated thing in a way that makes a meaningful claim - context-dependent and with "na" only being entailed in the most restrictive of scales, AS HAPPENS when the choice between "da" and "na'e da" is exclusive, such as with positive numbers and na'e positive numbers. Geoff From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sun Oct 12 06:22:57 1997 for ; Sun, 12 Oct 1997 06:22:55 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710121122.GAA06861@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: HACKER G N Sender: Lojban list From: HACKER G N Subject: Re: RV: na'e entails na? X-To: And Rosta X-cc: Lojban List To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <0EH2006AVO4JDZ@newcastle.edu.au> Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2181 On Thu, 25 Sep 1997, And Rosta wrote: > Geoff: > > > For example, everyone is either citizen of France or citizen of > > > some other country. [NB INCLUSIVE OR] I want to describe > > > the latter group as "na`e fraso zei selgugde" [I'm taking x1 of > > > selgugde to be a citizen]. But since for example someone can be a > > > citizen of both France and Britain, "na`e fraso zei selgugde" > > > would not work if it entails "na fraso zei selgugde". "na fraso > > > ..." gives me everyone who isn't French, whereas I want > > > everyone who is a citizen of a country other than France. > > > For that I would like to use "na`e fraso", but will not be > > > able to if everyone bar me gets their way! > > > > Why not just use "drata"? Surely examples like this are part of what it's > > meant for. > > Maybe: try to convince me. Suppose a couple are lying in bed > discussing what kind of hankypanky they want to get up to, > e.g. (a) spondoogling, (b) frothspeasing, (c) urxing, or [INC OR] > (d) suppigulation. One says to the other "I would very much > enjoy that you na`e suppigulate me", which would mean > "I would enjoy that you spondoogle me and I would enjoy that > you frothspease me and I would enjoy that you urx me". No, that's not correct. If you na'e suppigulate someone, you could EITHER be spondoogling them, OR frothspeasing them OR urxing them. It doesn't entail that you do everything that is not suppigulation. Why would it? That would be saying that you want them to do roda poi na'e nu suppigulate, which is a totally different claim. If you want someone to na'e suppigulate you, then you only want them to do su'oda poi na'e nu suppigulate, which is the DISJUNCT of roda poi na nu suppigulate, NOT the conjunct. > Now presumably you are proposing that one should say > "I would > very much enjoy that you drata suppigulate me", but you will > surely concede that this tanru is susceptible to a far greater > variety of interpretations than the na`e version would be. I don't even understand how you have arrived at this interpretation. "Na'e" entailing "na" seems just fine for this sentence as it is. Geoff From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sun Oct 12 06:23:16 1997 for ; Sun, 12 Oct 1997 06:23:15 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710121123.GAA06870@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: HACKER G N Sender: Lojban list From: HACKER G N Subject: Re: quantifiable pro-bridi (fwd) X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 781 On Thu, 25 Sep 1997, And Rosta wrote: > John: > > > This isn't explicitly > > > stated in the book because I was leery of saying too much about > > > second-order quantification when my understanding of it is > > > quite shaky. > > So's mine. > > Geoff: > > I would > > perhaps have been a bit more comfortable with "su'o nu bu'a", "su'o su'u > > bu'a" or some other such abstraction to express a > > predicate relation in a prenex, > > I was wondering if it might be possible to stick to first > order and use {ka}, which I don't understand very well. > > If we understand quantifying over predicates to be quantification > over intensions, how in Lojban do we get something denoting > an intension? Is it {ka}? What do you mean by "intension"? Geoff From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sun Oct 12 06:50:24 1997 for ; Sun, 12 Oct 1997 06:50:23 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710121150.GAA07049@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: HACKER G N Sender: Lojban list From: HACKER G N Subject: Re: na`e X-To: "Mark E. Shoulson" X-cc: Lojban List To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <199709261732.NAA11594@shekel.mcl.cs.columbia.edu> Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 916 On Fri, 26 Sep 1997, Mark E. Shoulson wrote: > >Date: Tue, 23 Sep 1997 11:51:37 +1000 > >From: HACKER G N > > > >On Mon, 22 Sep 1997, Arik Puder wrote: > > > >> HACKER G N wrote: > >> > > [ lots of quoted stuff ] > >> unsubscribe > > > >Unsubscribe? That's not very nice. Or am I supposed to pretend that Lojban > >is perfect? > > > >Geoff > > > > Others probably told you this already, but just in case... > > This probably wasn't an order directed at you; the person probably was > trying to unsubscribe from the mailing list, thinking this could be done by > sending the word "unsubscribe" to the lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu address > (the wrong address) and sent it by replying to a prior post, which quoted > it in. Yes, I know. I was just being a bit tongue-in-cheek. No one else has actually mentioned this email at all. :) Geoff From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Tue Oct 14 16:50:23 1997 for ; Tue, 14 Oct 1997 16:50:12 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710142150.QAA04523@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Chris Bogart Sender: Lojban list From: Chris Bogart Subject: Jorge's right re: ni X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 4316 Hi, After reading Jorge's last message and staring at the wall scratching myself for a while, I finally see his point, and it seems like an important one. The thing is, it's a question of sumti raising, which for some reason I find very difficult to think about clearly; my mind is too eager to let levels of abstraction slide around willy nilly. Unless everyone's sick of the topic, I'd like to re-explain it in a way that makes more sense to me: Here's how I convinced myself he's right: Let's talk about non-abstracted sumti first. If I were to say mi nelci le ckule be fo le mi bruna I like the school with-attendee my brother I like the school my brother goes to The sentence means that I like the school, but it does not imply that I like the fact that my brother attends it. Maybe he's a ne'er-do-well and I'm afraid he'll damage the reputation of the school. If I wanted to say that I liked the fact he was going there, I'd instead have to use the abstractor {nu}, and say: mi nelci lenu le ckule cu ckule fo le mi bruna I'm glad that the school is the school with-attendee my brother I'm glad my brother goes to the school This says I like the fact, but does *not* say I like the school. Again, maybe it's a cruddy school and he's a cruddy brother and they deserve each other. (purely hypothetical; my brother's banli) By analogy with this example, I claim that whenever you have a simple sumti with arguments connected by {be}, the main bridi doesn't claim anything about those {be} arguments, except that they help identify the one place that's priviledged by being connected to the {le} gadri. This might seem pedantic and obvious, but consider a trickier example: mi nelci le se skari be le do kerfa I like the color that your hair is This should *not* imply that I like the fact that your hair is that color. Mabye it's a beautiful shade of kelly green and I'm your conservative parent. To say I like the fact that your hair is that color, I'd have to use {nu} as before mi nelci lenu le se skari cu se skari le do kerfa I'm glad that that color is the color of your hair (and then I wouldn't be saying I liked the color in itself anymore -- maybe you've got a beautiful head of red hair, but I'd never paint my walls quite that shade.) This is a really tricky point for me to grasp, and I can't imagine how I'll ever learn to keep it straight when using Lojban outside of examples like these. But on to {ni}: I think the reference grammar is inconsistent, and confuses the two types of reference to numbers. If you want to refer to a number as a simple mathematical object, you should use a BAI modal, probably {sela'u}. If you want to talk about the fact that a particular number applies, you should use {ni} In the ref grammar, the first two examples (5.1, 5.2) are bare {le ni} sumti out of context, and the English glosses are necessarily ambiguous, so they might be right. Example 5.3 has got to be wrong. li pa vu'u mo'e leni le pixra cu blanu The number one minus how blue the picture is. This works just fine in English, but in Lojban we can't go subtracting from one the matter of how much blueness a picture has. The example should read: li pa vu'u mo'e le jai sela'u le pixra cu blanu 1 minus the quantity by which the picture is blue. I think Jorge will still quibble over {sela'u} can force blanu to cough up a quantity for something that isn't necessary blue, but at least we've got the sumti-raising problem solved. The final example, 5.5, seems fine to me: le pixra cu cenba le ni ce'u blanu The picture varies in the amount of blueness I recognize that we can't and shouldn't try to change the ref grammar at this late date, but I think {ni} is useful as I've described it, and I think my lojban usage can be consistent with the grammar if I avoid usages like example 5.3. I also think the same analysis could probably be applied to {jei}, and that in fact the school and hair color examples would be more correct with {jei} instead of {nu}. But I didn't want to confuse things with another disputed abstractor. Thanks for listening. I hope I haven't bored everyone to death. co'o mi'e kris From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Mon Oct 13 08:57:20 1997 for ; Mon, 13 Oct 1997 08:57:15 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710131357.IAA27990@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: HACKER G N Sender: Lojban list From: HACKER G N Subject: Re: na`e X-To: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS X-cc: Lojban List To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <0EHY00KT2DSK1D@newcastle.edu.au> Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1514 On Sun, 5 Oct 1997, JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS wrote: > >> Quantifiable pro-bridi are an abomination on the language. > > > >Ha, ha, ha! Okay. Would you like to explain that a little more? :) > > They are essentially unworkable as soon as you add a little of > complexity. You can use, for example, {su'o mlatu} in a prenex, > to mean "at least one cat". But you can't use {su'o bu'a} to mean > "at least one bu'a", because bu'a has a special rule for how it > works in the prenex. (The way I understand it, this contradicts > the claim of syntactic unambiguity. To keep that claim true bu'a > should be in a selmaho of its own, i.e. the parser should identify > it as a different thing than a normal selbri.) Well, I agree, and it sounds like that aspect of the language isn't well thought-out. Possibly that's something to think of for a slight re-baseline after the five-year design freeze. As far as quantifying selbri goes, what about talking about "nu bu'a", "su'u bu'a", or something like that? >As for our example, does > it really work with cei? Is {su'o bu'a cei na vreta} "some which is > not {vreta}", or does it mean "some which is {na vreta}"? > I would have said the last one, but in any case, whichever it > is, how do we say the other? I don't like that rule with "cei" either. It all sounds really ad hoc. I really think some selbri equivalent of "poi" would be preferable, or else "poi" with an abstraction sumti of the "su'u bu'a", etc. variety. Geoff From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Mon Oct 13 15:03:45 1997 for ; Mon, 13 Oct 1997 15:02:14 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710132002.PAA10434@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Lee Daniel Crocker Sender: Lojban list From: "Lee Daniel Crocker (none)" Organization: Piclab (http://www.piclab.com/) Subject: Re: Dvorak (& Lojban) X-To: Lojban Group To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <199710120825.BAA06496@red.colossus.net> from "Logical Language Group" at Oct 12, 97 04:22:36 am X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 3473 > >The same happens with "longer". Can you say that one > >thing is longer than another when you wouldn't say that > >either of them is long? In English, yes. In Lojban, you > >shouldn't use {clani} to translate "longer". We should > >rather use tremau: zmadu fi le ka mitre. > > I'm not quite managing to keep up with the discussion in real time, but > spotting this, I see a key point. "tremau" to me isn't zmadu fi le ka mitre > which I would take as being "more displaying the property of being measured > in mitres" or thus "more measureable in mitres" - probably true of things > at the macro level than of interstellar distances or atomic ones, and of > course more true of daistances than weights. tremau in not "longer". > clanymau should be "longer", and we then beg the question of ni because > we disagree whether it is "zmadu fi le ni/ka clani". If what we're trying to translate here is the meaning "of greater magnitude in one physical dimension" (colloquially "longer"), then I have to go with {tremau}, not {clanymau}. {clanymau} also maps to the English word "longer", but with the a different meaning--which is not very lojbanic: greater in the degree of being subjectively "long" in a certain context, which has the same lack of precision as {melbi}. The "more measurable in meters" concept you list above is a meaning that makes sense, but isn't very useful. It makes far more sense to me to use /all/ the measurement words like {mitre} in a consistent and simple way, to have meanings not specifically tied to their units when abstracted. After all, isn't that what the cognitive process of "abstraction" is, to omit specific referents and measurements? The fact that the unit defaults to meters should really be irrelevant to its deeper meaning--it's just a convenience. Secondly, let me retract part of my earlier statement about {clani}. {le na clani} doesn't actually fail to have {ni clani} (in the same context, as Jorge correctly emphasizes), it just has a {ni clani} of zero, which is as valid a quantity as any other, while it /does/ fail to have {ka clani}. Here I depart from Jorge a bit: something that is {na blabi} has no {ka blabi}, but it /does/ have {ni blabi} of zero. That helps the case where you're comparing two things. Like the word "longer", the word "length" also has several meanings. One of them is the abstract property of measurability in a certain spatial dimension--{ka mitre}--a property of matter, that it takes up space. Electrons and baseballs have {ka mitre}. Things like, say, the company I work for, do not (though the building we're in does). My company may not have the property of length, but it might have the property of duration (having been founded on a certain date), and the property of wealth. Another meaning of "length" is the specific amount of space a thing takes up--{ni mitre}. The only distinction I can see between {se mitre} and {ni mitre} is that {se mitre} seems to imply a specific referent, while {ni mitre} does not. One can think of "3 meters" as {ni mitre li ci} without any specific 3-meter-long thing involved. -- Lee Daniel Crocker "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Mon Oct 13 16:00:04 1997 for ; Mon, 13 Oct 1997 15:59:49 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710132059.PAA12954@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: CloversImp@AOL.COM Sender: Lojban list From: Karen Stein Subject: Re: newbie to lojbann with questions X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu X-cc: swo@execpc.com To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1128 In a message dated 97-10-09 13:02:59 EDT, Thom Quin wrote: Hello, I am new to Lojban (and Loglan). I am wondering if someone could tell me the main differences between these sister languages. Also, which one would work best for human speakers? Which one would work best for human to computer speaking (orally and typing). Thanks! Thom Quinn ** Since no one else seems to have answered as yet, here's my attempt: The main differences for the user are in just the areas you ask about -- communication between humans and between human and computer. Loglan, as I understand it, is much less functional a language in these senses since much of it is not in the public domain (as a language), or easily located so it can be learned. Lojban, on the other hand, is (as a language) basically all in the public domain so there are no restrictions on use of any part of it. Further, as the language developed computer parseability (how well a computer can follow it) remained a key factor in deciding whether changes could be made and how. Hope that is 1) accurate, and 2) helps. :) karis. From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Mon Oct 13 15:59:25 1997 for ; Mon, 13 Oct 1997 15:59:14 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710132059.PAA12932@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: CloversImp@AOL.COM Sender: Lojban list From: Karen Stein Subject: Re: na'enai X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1534 I like the simplicity (as I see it) of using na'enai as follows: > > It seems to me from this discussion that the meaning of "only", > > (at least one of its meanings) belongs right next to the meaning > > of "non-", because both require a hard to define "relevant set", > > so in fact there should be a NAhE that means that. (Something > > from UI seems a bit messy for this.) I suggest that what we need > > here is {na'enai}: > > > > ti na'e fraso > > This one is non-French. > > > > ta na'enai fraso > > That one is only-French. (i.e. not non-French.) > > > > Any takers? > It seems OK (or rather: it seems (a) to be very clever and > (b) to work OK). Some questions then: > > 1. What, then, happens to {po`o}? Does it then mean something more > like "merely"? Sorry, I don't have my books handy. > 2. Does using {na`enai} violate the spirit or letter of the > baseline? I wouldn't think so, but others may disagree. We usually do, after all. :) >>3. How would one say "He is not french and he is non-french"? >> - Since lots of people have announced their wish to say such >> things easily, is there a simple way to do it? Maybe >> {ti na`enai na`e fraso} might be satisfactory? Number 3 makes sense to me. I'd find it easy to use and remember, and I understood it at first glance. Considering my current level of Lojban use, this actually says something about it's ease. > --And Karen/karis From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Mon Oct 13 15:59:44 1997 for ; Mon, 13 Oct 1997 15:59:29 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710132059.PAA12944@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: CloversImp@AOL.COM Sender: Lojban list From: Karen Stein Subject: Re: Dvorak X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2290 In a message dated 97-10-07 13:06:49 EDT, Andrew wrote: << >Chris Bogart wrote: >> Its interesting how many Lojbanists > > have experimented with Dvorak. It must be the same attitude that draws > > us to the layout and the language. There's gotta be a better way of > > doing things... > I agree entirely. As do I. There is a problem, however. I started learning Dvorak once, but found that it not only meant that I didn't type Querty as fast, but also that I kept getting frustrated whenever I wasn't typing at home. Until I don't need to use other people's computers/typewriters, or take typing tests for jobs I guess I'm stuck. > Lee Sau Dan wrote: > > Perhaps you're right. I'm also addicted to Qwerty, although I know > > switch to Dvorak would speed up my typing. The main problem maybe > > that we cannot afford the *extra* time needed to train ourselves for > > Dvorak. We've already got a reasonably good alternative. So, we're > > unwilling to pay the cost for the switching, which brings benefits > > which would be only marginal... > The time investment must be made at some point, and the sooner the > better. Delaying only serves to add to the difficulty. Makes sense, but see my note above. > Edward Cherlin wrote: > > Switching to Dvorak after 30 years typing QWERTY was an amazing experience. > > There was a kind of pain in the brain that I have never experienced > > otherwise. I imagine that it also occurs in total immersion language > > learning. > [snip] > This IS total immersion learning for me. I decided that when I started > typing with Dvorak (which was two days ago), I was not going to use > qwerty anymore. > I have read, and fear would be immensely true for me, that trying to retain > qwerty skills is an immense burden on one's attempts to learn Dvorak. For me it went both ways, since I had need to use both layouts. > Sorry to anybody who's annoyed that I'm using this mailing list for > completely off-topic dialogue. I don't mind, myself, particularly since the discussion has also applied to language learning, easiest key layout for lojban, etc. karis. From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Mon Oct 13 16:09:48 1997 for ; Mon, 13 Oct 1997 16:09:24 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710132109.QAA13272@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: CloversImp@AOL.COM Sender: Lojban list From: Karen Stein Subject: Re: {le logjji batkyta'o morna} logical keyboard layouts X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2255 In a message dated 97-10-09 08:00:11 EDT, George Foot wrote: > coi rodo > There was some interest recently in how appropriate the Dvorak layout is for Lojban typing. I was playing around last night and wrote a short program to assess how different keyboard layouts compare with one another for a given piece of text. > Preliminary results seem to suggest that the Dvorak layout should still be the more comfortable, despite things which seem wrong, like having the ' key on the same hand as the vowels, and the H key having a central position. > The Lojban keyboard layout is a fictional one of my own invention; it is the same as the Dvorak layout but with the apostrophe key interchanged with the H key. Just this small change does seem to have made a big difference. This is probably the only change that could be made without disrupting people's typing too much; since the apostrophe sounds almost like an H anyway it's not that great a change IMHO. Of course, no OS supports it ;). I see no reason that programmers, at least, in the lojban community could not rewrite keyboard assignment programs that change from Querty to Dvorak so they accept this change. I know that on the Mac, at least, this is trivial with the right software. Again, however, there is the question of the worth of a new keyboard layout that is seriously uncommon. Also, until someone primarily types in lojban, as Andrew hopes to do, such a keyboard would cause problems because of the more difficult reach for the 'h'. George, statistics on english text, for example, using the lojban keyboard would be interesting. People could then decide whether to use the better placement for the appostrophe or the 'h'. > It's encouraging that the figures in each case were so close; implying that these two texts use similar letter patterns perhaps. > Assuming my program's doing a reasonable job, then, the Qwerty layout is just as bad for both languages, the Dvorak layout is better for both, but not as much better for Lojban as it is for English (which I expected, anyway). My {jbobatkymorna} is of course best for Lojban writing :). karis. From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Mon Oct 13 16:49:45 1997 for ; Mon, 13 Oct 1997 16:49:32 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710132149.QAA15353@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Thom Quinn Sender: Lojban list From: Thom Quinn Subject: AL and AI X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 419 I understand some people have done some beginning work with Lojban and AI. Or, what has been done with Lojban as a computer language? Does anyone out there know what had been done and where I could find some information either in journals, books, or on the web. If someone is out there on the mailing list, please feel free to contact me personally. Thanks, Thom Quinn swo@execpc.com thomquinn@esosoft.com From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Mon Oct 13 21:07:07 1997 for ; Mon, 13 Oct 1997 21:06:41 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710140206.VAA26783@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS Sender: Lojban list From: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS Subject: Re: ka/ni kama X-To: lojban To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 4808 cu'u la kris >Setting jei aside for a minute, could you give an example of the >two uses of "ni" and how they conflict? I don't understand >the distinction. 1- {ni} as a number (in the Lojban sense, i.e. a PA). 1a. le ni la djan cu ricfu cu du li piso'i The degree to which John is rich is much. 1b. le ni le vi jubme cu kurfa cu zmadu le ni jy cukla The amount that this table is square is greater than the amount that it is round. An example from the refgram: 1c. li pa vu'u mo'e le ni le pixra cu blanu the-number 1 minus the-operand the amount-of (the picture being-blue) 1 - B, where B = blueness of the picture. [I don't think that something that is not blue can have an amount of being blue greater than zero, but that's a different matter. To say what the refgram means by that example I would use {le ni lo blanu cu pagbu le pixra} "the amount of something blue being a component of the picture".] Or something to say to your lover: 1d. mi kancu le'i tarci le ni mi do prami I count the number of stars to be the amount that I love you. In all of those examples, {le ni ...} stands for a number, it could be replaced by a {li PA} and the sentence still makes sense. 2- {ni} as an indirect question. 2a. mi nelci le ni la meris cu ninmu I like to what extent Mary is a woman. 2b. do mi zmadu le ni ce'u nelci le nu ri dansu You exceed me in the amount we like to dance. An example from the refgram: 2c. le pixra cu cenba le ni ce'u blanu the picture varies in-the amount-of (X is blue) The picture varies in how blue it is. In these cases, we can't replace {le ni...} with a number. Suppose that {le ni la meris cu ninmu cu du li piso'i} "the extent to which Mary is a woman is a lot", then 2a. would be saying {mi nelci li piso'i}, which, to me, is nonsense, and it is certainly not what is meant. If {le ni ...} is indeed a number, as the definition and the examples (1) indicate, then the examples (2) would be cases of sumti raising. They should be replaced by {tu'a le ni...}, where it would stand for the indirect question {le nu makau du le ni...}, i.e. "what is the amount of...". But the problem is that very often {ni} is used in the indirect question mode without tu'a marking, even in refgram examples. Something very similar happens with {jei}. >I believe people sometimes see ghosts, but I don't believe ghosts really >exist. So I would say {de li'i da pruxi} but {da na pruxi}. I would like >to be able to say something can have an extent of being long, without >being long, in a perfectly parallel construction: {de ni da clani} but {da >na clani}. I don't agree they are parallel cases. If something is not long by a given standard, why would the amount of it being long by that standard be different from zero. If the amount of it being long is very small, but greater than zero, then the thing _is_ long, even if only a little bit long by that standard. If it is short by that standard then it can't also be long. >The existence of the abstraction equals the truth value of the >thing abstracted only in the special cases of nu, ka, and jei. I don't think it applies to ka, since ka abstractions are never full bridi, they can't claim anything by themselves. For example: le jubme cu claxu le ka ce'u cukla The table lacks the property of being round. There is no claim of anything being round there. In the case of nu, I'm not sure whether there is agreement that talking of {le nu broda} makes the implicit claim that it happens. I don't think I have a problem with things like: mi pacna le nu do bazi klama I hope that you come soon. where I'm not claiming that you will come soon. As for {jei}, assuming it is the truth value and not the indirect question, then it obviously doesn't claim its bridi. If the bridi is false, then {le jei } will exist and be the truth value "FALSE". >It doesn't >relate at all with si'o, su'o, or li'i, so the "rule" that ni is bending >when it assigns values to non-broda is not really a rule of abstractors at >all, but an incorrect generalization based on the behavior of ka. I don't claim any such rule for abstractors. If ni has the number meaning it can't really be compared with ka. If it has the indirect question meaning then yes, sometimes it acts just like a ka. In those cases {le ni } is very similar to {le ka la'u makau}. co'o mi'e xorxes From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Mon Oct 13 21:19:19 1997 for ; Mon, 13 Oct 1997 21:19:10 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710140219.VAA27348@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS Sender: Lojban list From: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS Subject: Re: na`e X-To: lojban To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 840 cu'u la djef > As far as quantifying >selbri goes, what about talking about "nu bu'a", "su'u bu'a", or something >like that? I don't think it would work, because those expressions already have a meaning. Any convention that uses them for selbri quantification would be in conflict with the pre-existing meaning. >I don't like that rule with "cei" either. It all sounds really ad hoc. I >really think some selbri equivalent of "poi" would be preferable, or else >"poi" with an abstraction sumti of the "su'u bu'a", etc. variety. I don't think we can have the kind of selbri metaquantification that things like {su'o bu'a} are supposed to be without making important changes to the grammar. Of course there is nothing wrong with normal selbri quantification in the standard form: {su'o da poi selbri}. co'o mi'e xorxes From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Tue Oct 14 01:05:24 1997 for ; Tue, 14 Oct 1997 01:05:07 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710140605.BAA00746@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: Dvorak (& Lojban) X-To: jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1973 Jorge: >- Is he tall? >-No. >-No? How tall is he? >- 1m >-Ah, you're right, he's not tall then. > >- Is he inept? >-No. >-No? How inept is he? >-I told you he is not inept, why do you ask how inept he is? > >If you say that someone is not tall, it still makes sense to ask >how tall he is. Why? Because the sense of tall in "how tall" >is different. I will first note thatthis discussion is overlapping the na'e/na discussion slightly, and presume that others might see how without going on at length. I think your examples betray the follies of English in several ways. Inept has a built in negation, that one runs afoul of when one plays with teh word. I also think that the English phrasings make the case worse than it is. Let me rephrase: -Is he vertically-long by the typical standard? -No. -No? What is his degree of tallness by some objective measurement standard? -1m -A, you're right, he's not tall then. -Is he ept (to'e inept) by the typical standard? -No. -No? What is his degree of his eptness by some objective measurement standard? -1 eptic -A, you're right, he's not ept then. English does not have a way of expressing degrees of negation. If something is "not" something, that is all that can typically be said. Likewise if something is "non-something" or in this case "in-something". Indeed There are no international metric units for negated measureables %^) Yet we can talk aboit degrees of failure, and fuzzy logic to some extent can talk about the degree to which something is ept or inept. IN short you could have given the same problem without branching into aptitude, by using "short". "How short is he?" is equally troublesome, since we do not have a measure of shortness that is independent of a measure of longness. We similarly cannot measure ineptness, but perhaps can measure aptitude, so English SHOULD allow us to measure inaptitude using the same scale as aptitude. lojbab From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Tue Oct 14 01:20:51 1997 for ; Tue, 14 Oct 1997 01:20:50 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710140620.BAA01114@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: clani X-To: jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1032 >If you intend to compare the longness (ka clani) of two objects, >then you better pick two objects that have it. For a given ka clani, >many objects won't have it. I disagree. Every measureable object has ka clani fi da. Otherwise you could not say that another object was clanymau it (zmadu fi leka/ni clani). To be less in ka/ni clani, it must still have a number/measure; otherwise one cannot make a comparison - the proper answer would be na'i to a question like "Is an atom longer than a neutrino", just as it would be to "Am I taller than a thought?". lojbab ---- lojbab lojbab@access.digex.net Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: ftp.access.digex.net /pub/access/lojbab or see Lojban WWW Server: href="http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/" Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me. From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Tue Oct 14 01:16:51 1997 for ; Tue, 14 Oct 1997 01:16:50 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710140616.BAA01007@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: ni X-To: jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1981 > Lee: >>{mitre} is a special case because it already has a place for >>measurement, so I might agree that {le ni mitre} is just the same >>thing as {le se mitre}. But something like {ninmu} makes it more >>useful: {mi nelci le ni ti ninmu} "I like the amount-of she is-a- >>woman/I like her degree of femininity". > >This is how I would say it: {mi nelci le nu ti ninmu la'u makau} > "I like to what extent she is a woman". > >If {ni} is used as above for indirect questions, then it shouldn't >be used for amounts. There you are not saying that you like an >amount. If Mary's degree of femininity is the same as Jane's that >doesn't mean that if you like Mary's degree of femininity you will >also like Jane's, does it? What I see you calling an "indirect question", I would call a "jei" question. " "I like the degree to which "She is a woman" is true." The difference in my mind between jei and ni is that jei tops out at 1.0 on a scale of 0 to 1, whereas ni can be openended, and therefore ni broda has meaning when you have a number greater than the minimum needed to say that ko'a broda. We understand this for femininity, where two things can both be feminine, and one can still be more feminine than the other. And put this elliptically, we can even say that two things can be inept to different degrees and still be inept. A ni broda response to a jei broda question is perhaps acceptable in conversational implicature, but is not necessarily the most appropriate response. lojbab ---- lojbab lojbab@access.digex.net Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: ftp.access.digex.net /pub/access/lojbab or see Lojban WWW Server: href="http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/" Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me. From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Tue Oct 14 01:22:38 1997 for ; Tue, 14 Oct 1997 01:22:35 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710140622.BAA01149@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: tremau X-To: jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1694 >So you say that {tremau} to you is {zmadu fi le ka ke'a mitre xokauroi} >"more in how often it is measured in meters" than {zmadu fi le ka ke'a >mitre makau} "more in how many meters it measures". Why would >you choose the more involved decomposition of the lujvo, when the >simpler one seems much more useful? I am having trouble debating this with you since I do not know whether you mean something different by "leka broda" in x3 of zmadu than I mean by "leni broda in the same position. In most cases, I would consider them interchangeable, since ni broda is simply a quantitative measurement of ka broda, but I am not sure that it is always the case, especially if you were to convince me that an object which is "na clani" also na se ckaji leka clani. ni broda always has a scale/degree associated