Date: Fri, 19 Dec 1997 12:42:08 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199712191742.MAA17983@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: And Rosta Sender: Lojban list From: And Rosta Organization: University of Central Lancashire Subject: Re: whether (was Re: ni, jei, perfectionism) X-To: LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 3311 X-From-Space-Date: Fri Dec 19 12:42:11 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Carl: > >> >> So 'the fact that' is explicitly transient? > >> >No, but nor is nu. > >> I disagree. Transience (used to be) the _essence_ of {nu}. > > > >What, then, would have been used for, say, modern {lo nu > >da zasti} - "the event of there being something that exists"? > > That still sounds right, taking one meaning of 'modern' as the > time envelope which includes something that exists. I meant: "_lo nu da zasti_ in modern Lojban, as opposed to ur-Lojban of 10 years ago. lo nu zasti cintinues throughout all time. > >> I disagree that {mi jmive} and {nu mi jmive} are equivalent, > > > >What would the difference be? > > {mi jmive} is the statement that "I live/lived/will live"; right > {nu mi jmive} is the period of time during which "I live" is > true, treated as an entity; Or rather, it is the statement that there is such a period of time. More fully, it is {da nu mi jmive}. > that's simplistic, but is pretty > much the way I understand it. It feels like there is more to {nu} > than just the time interval and ability to sequence, but I'm not > sure how to describe it... I never really questioned what {nu} > meant to me until I had to explain why it was different from > your usage. Certainly there is a sense that {nu} events are > not permanent, since they have a beginning and an end (even if, > as in {le nu munje}, the duration is infinite.) It seems a bit perverse to insist that something with infinite duration has an end. Anyway, apart from that I seem to pretty much agree with your understanding of nu. > ... > After leaving this message half-written for a few hours, it seems > to me that {nu} really refers to the tense of the bridi; typical > usage restricts that to timelike aspects, but spacelike aspects > could probably fit as well if the context supported it. Since {nu} > is the most general event abstractor, aspects such as achievement > are still implied within {nu}, but only as a part of the whole. > So, {nu} is saying that 'there's a bridi, and that bridi has a tense, > and I'm talking about that tense'. OK. > >> although I do see that they both differ from {le du'u mi jmive}. > >> I can see that the predicate formed from {mi jmive} with {du'u} can > >> unify with both {mi jmive} and {nu mi jmive}; it could unify in some > >> sense with {ka mi jmive} or {ni mi jmive} as well, since those > >> are all aspects of the same base bridi, but the only thing that > >> really _matches_ {le du'u mi jmive} is {mi jmive}. > > > >I'm not clear what "matching" or "unifying with" mean. Can you > >explain again? > > Hmmmmm... my usage was sloppy. 'Unification' as I meant it is a > pattern-matching algorithm used in artificial intelligence for > finding facts that match with rules, binding variables to specific > facts; it's something I'm aware of but not an expert in. My intent > was to describe how I thought bridi in the environment could satisfy > the predication, without being rigorous about the process. > > So, {le du'u mi jmive} is a predication, and the only fact/object > that makes it true is {mi jmive}. {mi jmive} is an act of asserting that {le du`u mi jmive} is true. In most cases, {le du`u mi jmive} is true if and only if it is the case that {da nu mi jmive} - i.e. that {le du`u mi jmive} is temporally manifest. --And