From arosta@uclan.ac.uk Thu May 03 08:04:49 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: arosta@uclan.ac.uk X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_1_2); 3 May 2001 15:04:49 -0000 Received: (qmail 1774 invoked from network); 3 May 2001 15:04:48 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by l9.egroups.com with QMQP; 3 May 2001 15:04:48 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO com1.uclan.ac.uk) (193.61.255.3) by mta3 with SMTP; 3 May 2001 15:04:48 -0000 Received: from gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk by com1.uclan.ac.uk with SMTP (Mailer); Thu, 3 May 2001 15:46:21 +0100 Received: from DI1-Message_Server by gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk with Novell_GroupWise; Thu, 03 May 2001 16:06:31 +0100 Message-Id: X-Mailer: Novell GroupWise 5.5.2 Date: Thu, 03 May 2001 16:06:07 +0100 To: lojban Subject: Re: [lojban] Predicate logic and childhood. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline From: And Rosta X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 7045 Rob: #On Wed, May 02, 2001 at 04:21:22PM +0100, And Rosta wrote: #> #People seem to be implying that as soon as there is cause and effect in= volved, #> #you are not allowed to use logical connectives. Not that you can choose= not to #> #use them in favor of a cause-and-effect statement, but that you just ca= n't use #> #them. I have yet to see an answer to why there should not be a choice o= f #> #sentence structure. #>=20 #> I have lost the thread, I'm afraid, and can't reconstruct what are the i= ssues #> under debate. Would you be willing to take the trouble to recapitulate? # #The sentence that started all of this is "If you clean your room, I'll let= you #go to the park." # #I suggested {ko (do bazi) nicygau ledo kumfa .ijo mi curmi lenu do klama l= e #panka}. Thanks. I have been reading the thread, but I still don't see how you reach the conclusion that=20 "People seem to be implying that as soon as there is cause and effect=20 involved, you are not allowed to use logical connectives. Not that you=20 can choose not to use them in favor of a cause-and-effect statement,=20 but that you just can't use them.=20 I see nothing at all wrong with translating the sentence with "ijo". Complications are added by your suggestion of "ko". The English is not an imperative, and the translation does not require "ko". Of course there are English sentences like: Clean your room and I'll let you go to the park. Take one more step and you're dead. Clean your room or I won't let you go to the park. Stop or I'll shoot. and these present some semantic issues much debated in linguistics. #xorxes thinks that this sentence means something different than "If you #clean your room, I'll let you go to the park" and should not be used to #translate it, instead suggesting either using the x3 of curmi (spawning a #side-debate about what the x3 of curmi really means) or some sort of #"conditional" which expresses it in terms of cause and effect. (I have no = idea #how this would be formed in Lojban, and I don't believe an example has bee= n #provided, though it might be 'rinka' with a 'nu' on both sides.) I would translate your English sentence with ijo but changing "ko" to "do". Your Lojban sentence means to me either (a) "Iff you go to the park, I here= by order you to clean your room", or (b) "I hereby order that iff you go to th= e park you clean your room", which is close to what you want, but allows that the addressee may neither go to the park nor clean their room. (a) seems silly, but seems right for "Queue here if you want to see the fil= m" =3D "Iff you want to see the film I hereby instruct you to queue here". These problems arise because {ko} conflates both the command and the reference to the addressee. These are logically separate and if they're not linguistically separable then problems ensue. #lojbab posted a confusing message where he suggested that logical connecti= ves #would be used for things like "If wishes were horses, then beggars would r= ide", #but it seems that, for one thing, that wouldn't work at all, and also that #seems to be another issue which I don't think was satisfactorily resolved. # #I believe that both .ijo and the conditional would give a good enough #approximation of the English meaning of the sentence. English is fuzzy eno= ugh #that we don't need to argue about how to translate the most detailed #implications of a sentence. I don't think implications need be translated at all. Just translate the me= aning the sentence encodes, and what the original implicates the translation will also implicate. For example, your English example implicates a command without encoding it, and hence the Lojban can perfectly well do the same. #Incidentally, I'd like to see how this "conditional" would be constructed.= I'd #rather not hunt through the archives of the list. You mean how to translate the English sentence? Well, to repeat, mine is: do nicygau ledo kumfa .ijo mi curmi le nu do klama le panka --And.