From alkaline@bigfoot.com Tue Sep 12 05:58:41 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 4006 invoked from network); 12 Sep 2000 12:58:39 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m3.onelist.org with QMQP; 12 Sep 2000 12:58:39 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO ho.egroups.com) (10.1.2.219) by mta1 with SMTP; 12 Sep 2000 12:58:39 -0000 X-eGroups-Return: alkaline@bigfoot.com Received: from [10.1.10.108] by ho.egroups.com with NNFMP; 12 Sep 2000 12:58:39 -0000 Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 12:58:34 -0000 To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: interpretation of ".ijanai" & ".ana" as 'if' Message-ID: <8pl99q+g5d7@eGroups.com> User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.82 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Length: 1852 X-Mailer: eGroups Message Poster X-Originating-IP: 192.35.17.26 From: "Garrett Jones" X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 4292 i've been reading through the reference grammar and am currently at chapter 14, which is about the lojban connectives. They are one of the most confusing aspects of lojban that i've seen so far. One of the main reasons, i suspect, is the attempt to explain a logical language using an illogical one, which leads to confusion when trying to use the colloquial translation to figure out a lojban sentence. I got stuck for a while on the lojban connection ".ijanai" and it's english interpretation as 'if'. I created my own examples, created truth tables, turned them backwards and upside down, then i finally figured it out. Any form of -a- (or) actually contains two ifs inside of it. For example, the sentence: la djan. .a la bab. klama le zarci "john or bob went to the store" contains two ifs: -if bob didn't go to the store(second claim is false), then john did (for the whole statement to be true) -if john didn't go to the store(first claim is false), then bob did The reason for this is that if one claims of the conjunction is incorrect, then the other side must be true for the whole statement to be true(or the speaker is lying). The ".ijanai" (or .ana) connection is the same thing, except one of the sentences is negated, with the following two if-statement results: la djan. .ana la bab. klama le zarci -if bob went to the store(second claim is false), then john did [this is the interpretation used by the reference grammar: "John went to the store if bob did"] -if john didn't go to the store(first claim is false), then bob didn't go either [this implication is omitted by the reference grammar). The english interpretation used by the reference grammar omits the second implication and is what led to my confusion. I hope this clears up any confusion that other people had on the same issue. -co'o mi'e jildicnen