Message-ID: <3447761A.4572@locke.ccil.org> Date: Fri, 17 Oct 1997 10:28:42 -0400 From: John Cowan Organization: Lojban Peripheral X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (WinNT; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Lojban List Subject: Re: ka/ni kama References: <199710162158.QAA18552@locke.ccil.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Status: RO Content-Length: 8892 Lee Daniel Crocker (none) wrote: > Not wanting to get into the philosophical argument of whether or > not qualia are meaningful existents, And a good thing too. I could explain it to you, but then I'd have to kill you. :-) > I /can/ ask what are "pure" > numbers if not qualia? If /these/ qualia are basic to the language, > why can't I express others? There are many interpretations of numbers as sets: in Cantor's interpretation (which is hardcoded into the Loglan offshoot -gua!spi), *n* is the set of all sets of cardinality *n*. In von Neumann's interpretation, 0 is the null set and *n* is the set whose members are the integers smaller than *n*. And there are others. > And that brings to mind the obvious place one might want dimensioned > quantities: in mekso. If one can say that 2+2=4 without implying > that 4 of something are around somewhere, why can I not say that a > newton is a kg*m/sec^2 without implying that any pushing is going on? You can. This is what the sumti/selbri to number converters are for. -- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org e'osai ko sarji la lojban From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Fri Oct 17 11:54:25 1997 for ; Fri, 17 Oct 1997 11:54:10 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710171654.LAA26566@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: And Rosta Sender: Lojban list From: And Rosta Organization: University of Central Lancashire Subject: abstractors X-To: LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 1595 Chris: > On Thu, 16 Oct 1997, JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS wrote: > > >3. Are ni and ka redundant, strictly speaking? Given du`u and nu > > > and ce`u, is there anything that they can't do but ni and ka > > > can? > > > > Well, du'u would be redundant to ka, since ce'u is supposed > > to be used with ka. And yes, ni is definitely redundant. > > Could {nu} be defined as {ka fau makau}? I don't think so. John has very elegantly proposed treating du`u as a variant of ka that indicates no implicit ce`u. A du`u/ka is an abstract object, like a number, that is not part of the material world. But a nu is a portion of the material world: {nu broda} is that portion of the material world that is sufficient to make {broda} true. Jorge: > >2. If {ni} was "clarified" to Option 2, could {jei} be redefined > > as "whether"? At the moment {jei} is parallel to option 1, > > but Option 2 seems usefuller. > > I suppose I agree. But I've been complaining about this > dichotomy for years without much success. Both modalities > of jei and ni made it to the refgram examples. Personally > I never use {jei}, and I think I will abandon {ni} as well, > which I haven't used much anyway. If {jei} meant "whether", then it would be straightforward to do subordinate interrogative clauses by means of quantifiers rather than by means of Q-kau. Thus instead of {djuno le du`u ma kau klama} you could have {ro da zo`u djuno le jei da klama} I would like to be able to do that. ........................ BTW, does li`i involve a ce`u too? --And. From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Fri Oct 17 12:04:02 1997 for ; Fri, 17 Oct 1997 12:03:41 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710171703.MAA26805@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: And Rosta Sender: Lojban list From: And Rosta Organization: University of Central Lancashire Subject: Re: Problems with Abstraction X-To: rk@prefer.net To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1901 Ron Kuris says: > > Is it really that simple? Suppose you fill an omitted place with > > a variable bound by a quantifier. Can that quantifier than have > > any scope at all over the rest of the sentence? For example, > > can {mi na citka} mean "Not everything is eaten by me", or > > "Everything is uneaten by me"? It seems to me that in practise > > we restrict ourselves to a much narrower range of interpretations. > > I'm new at this, but it seems to me that {mi na citka} parses as: > > (mi { VAU}) > > which means: I don't eat. Does it, though? I would like it to, but it doesn't on certain accounts of sumti underspecification. It seems to me that either constraints must be placed on the possible interpretation of {zo`e} (at present the only such constraint is that {no da} is excluded}, or sentences with zo`e sumti will be susceptible to a huge array of conflicting and sometimes contradictory interpretations. It might be countered that because {zo`e} means "the understood sumti", it will only be used (explicitly or implicitly) when the addressee is perfectly aware how zo`e is interpreted, but the fact is that in the case of implicit zo`e this is untrue. In fact I think implicit zo`e is interpreted either as {ba`e ko`a} (i.e. specific) or as {da} with implicit existential quantification of maximally narrow scope. > I think the "everything" is unspecified > {zo'e}. > > If you want "I eat nothing at all", which I think is logically > equivalent to "Everything is uneaten by me", don't you need: > > mi citka noda > I eat nothing > > If you want "everything is not-eaten" then maybe: > > mi na citka roda > I not-eat each something > I don't eat everything That means "not everything is eaten by me; something is not eaten by me". To say everything is uneaten: mi citka ro da na ku, or {ro da zo`u mi na citka da}. From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Fri Oct 17 13:55:23 1997 for ; Fri, 17 Oct 1997 13:55:19 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710171855.NAA29893@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: John Cowan Sender: Lojban list From: John Cowan Organization: Lojban Peripheral Subject: Re: Problems with Abstraction X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2648 And Rosta wrote: > (Somebody wrote): > > I'm new at this, but it seems to me that {mi na citka} parses as: > > > > (mi { VAU}) > > > > which means: I don't eat. Syntactically, "na" is part of the selbri, but semantically it has scope over the entire sentence, for "mi na citka" means "naku zo'u mi citka", i.e, It is false that I eat something-unspecified. > Does it, though? I would like it to, but it doesn't on > certain accounts of sumti underspecification. > > It seems to me that either constraints must be placed > on the possible interpretation of {zo`e} (at present the > only such constraint is that {no da} is excluded}, or > sentences with zo`e sumti will be susceptible to a huge > array of conflicting and sometimes contradictory interpretations. The second seems to be the case. > It might be countered that because {zo`e} means "the understood > sumti", it will only be used (explicitly or implicitly) when > the addressee is perfectly aware how zo`e is interpreted, So the speaker must hope. > but the fact is that in the case of implicit zo`e this is > untrue. In fact I think implicit zo`e is interpreted either > as {ba`e ko`a} (i.e. specific) or as {da} with implicit > existential quantification of maximally narrow scope. There is no difference between explicit "zo'e" and pure elision: null is an alternative surface representation of "zo'e", less syntactically general. > > I think the "everything" is unspecified > > {zo'e}. > > > > If you want "I eat nothing at all", which I think is logically > > equivalent to "Everything is uneaten by me", don't you need: > > > > mi citka noda > > I eat nothing > > > > If you want "everything is not-eaten" then maybe: > > > > mi na citka roda > > I not-eat each something > > I don't eat everything > > That means "not everything is eaten by me; something is not > eaten by me". > To say everything is uneaten: mi citka ro da na ku, > or {ro da zo`u mi na citka da}. All these are correct, and quite simply "mi na citka" can mean any of them, plus it can mean "I don't eat that" (subject of discourse). So plausible English readings are I don't eat that. I don't eat (anything). I don't eat something. Context, and nothing else, tells the listener which is meant. If the speaker wishes to be more specific, the more verbose alternatives "mi na citka le co'e/le go'i/le se go'i" or "mi na citka da" or "mi naku citka da" can be used. -- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org e'osai ko sarji la lojban