Message-ID: <34464A05.EAA@locke.ccil.org> Date: Thu, 16 Oct 1997 13:08:21 -0400 From: John Cowan Organization: Lojban Peripheral X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (WinNT; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Lojban List Subject: Re: Problems with Abstraction References: <199710152221.RAA25342@locke.ccil.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Status: RO Content-Length: 2882 Lee Daniel Crocker (none) wrote: > The refgram makes sense and is reasonably clear on this point, but I > do see {ka} and {ni} used (by myself, too) as if there were a semi- > implied {ce'u} or {makau} in the first omitted place. Perfectly OK. An omitted place means whatever the speaker intends it to mean, and if the intent is to mean "ce'u", then that's what it means. "ce'u" was put into the language to allow the existing usage (omitted place) to be made explicit. -- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org e'osai ko sarji la lojban From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Thu Oct 16 14:14:23 1997 for ; Thu, 16 Oct 1997 14:14:15 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710161914.OAA11942@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: John Cowan Sender: Lojban list From: John Cowan Organization: Lojban Peripheral Subject: Re: forward from Greg Higley X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1768 Lee Daniel Crocker wrote: > From the examples, {le ka > do xunre} is the property of your being red, but not necessarily any > particular instance {nu} of it at any particular time or place, so > there's no {ce'u} there anywhere. True. But I suggest (see below) that the wording "proposition that you are red" is better English, and that using "du'u" rather than "ka" in that case is more perspicuous Lojban. JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS wrote: > You can't have a {ka} without an explicit or implicit {ce'u}. > What would it mean, other than {nu}? If you don't agree that > a property must always be a property _of_ something, how > do you say "property" in Lojban? I think that a zero-adic intension ("ka" with no "ce'u" explicit or implicit) is a "du'u". The word "property" is too limited to capture the full meaning of "le ka ...", which means "proposition" when zero-adic, "property" when monadic, and "relation" when dy-or-more-adic. The main use of "du'u" is to make it clear that no "ce'u" is present, and also to add the convenience x2 place (le se du'u = lu'e le du'u). > Right. The default place for {ce'u} is the first open slot. Probably usually. It's not a rule. > > Most > > lojbanists would use {ka ckule} and {ka se ckule} in very different > > ways. But again, the rules say that they are the same -- otherwise > > we are 'favoring' the first sumti over the others. > > > Yes, in a sense we are. The rules say that both "ka ckule" and "ka se ckule" are incomplete, because they have ellipsized places. These places must be filled in by extra-grammatical conventions. -- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org e'osai ko sarji la lojban