From nicholas@uci.edu Wed Aug 22 15:49:47 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: nicholas@uci.edu X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_3_1); 22 Aug 2001 22:49:47 -0000 Received: (qmail 42191 invoked from network); 22 Aug 2001 22:48:31 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by l7.egroups.com with QMQP; 22 Aug 2001 22:48:31 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO e4e.oac.uci.edu) (128.200.222.10) by mta1 with SMTP; 22 Aug 2001 22:48:31 -0000 Received: from localhost (nicholas@localhost) by e4e.oac.uci.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA15754; Wed, 22 Aug 2001 15:48:29 -0700 (PDT) X-Authentication-Warning: e4e.oac.uci.edu: nicholas owned process doing -bs Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2001 15:48:29 -0700 (PDT) X-Sender: To: John Cowan Cc: Subject: Draft ka lesson (was Re: status of ka In-Reply-To: <3B8426F9.9010702@reutershealth.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII From: Nick NICHOLAS X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 9942 On Wed, 22 Aug 2001, John Cowan wrote: > Nick NICHOLAS wrote: > No, it is a relation (the 3-place relation between a kind person, a > recipient of kindness, and a kind behavior). It is a reified > predicate of arity 3, just as one-ce'u leka-clauses are > reified predicates of arity 1. > According to the all-ce'u view, anyway. > > I still don't see how *every* place is ce'u, just like > > *no* place is ce'u, is any different... from du'u. > Not at all, but quite otherwise. A ledu'u-clause is a reified > predicate of arity 0. OK, lemme try and break this down, because one day I'm going to have to write a lesson on this. In fact, this might as well be the draft for it: *** When you want to say that happens in the world, you use nu. When you want to *talk about* saying that something happens in the world, you use du'u. This has the effect of reifying the nu-clause. In other words, it takes what was an event, an occurrence in the physical world, and turns it into an object, a thing, which you can think, which you can discover, which you can use in logic. (But not which you can say: that's sedu'u). In English, this is a proposition, or a fact. Often you'll want to do this reification, but you want to keep one of its places open. The reason is, you want to consider the proposition, as it applies to various entities that can fill that slot. For example, when you're searching for kindness, you want to consider the proposition "x1 is kind to x2", but what you're really interested in is, what fills x1 in that proposition; not what fills x2. We then say you are considering the property of kindness. And because properties are the properties *of* something, that something is the x1 place. In Lojban, such properties are indicated with {ka}, and what the property is a property of is indicated with {ce'u}. {ce'u} is a slot-holder. But a property is still a reification: it's just like {du'u}, it's something you hold in your mind about what happens in the world, rather than something that objectively happens in the world. The difference is, {ka} has an empty slot, and you're interested in the {ka}-clause only inasmuch as you're interested in what fills the slot. So you search for {ka}-clauses, to find what will fill the slot. You compare things to see how well they fit the slot. And you can have bridi in which the property (with its slot) is related to a value (which would fill that slot): I am alien in the property of "x1 is from out of town" (as applied to me.) I am big in the property of "x1 is tall" (as applied to me.) I satisfy someone that the property "x1 is intelligent" applies to me. [Insert here stuff on influence and susceptibility from existing lesson] What happens when you find the value that fills the slot? Then --- and here Lojban parts ways with English --- you no longer have a slot; so you no longer have a property. You've gone back to {du'u}. If {mi mansa do leka ce'u prije}, that's the same as saying {do djuno ledu'u mi prije}. Be careful here: what English (and in fact, most traditional usage) calls properties are actually considered just states in Lojban --- that is, something that happens in the world, but without anybody lifting a finger. Being a runner, aka running, is hard work; so we're happy to think of it as an event: {nu bajra}. But being happy, aka happiness, just happens, without any work; so we're inclined to call it {ka gleki}. But that's misleading. English distinguishes between running and happiness grammatically, because run is a verb and happy is an adjective. But verbs and adjectives don't mean anything to Lojban (or to many other languages), so there's nothing to say you can't say {nu gleki}. As a rule of thumb: if you wouldn't say {ka bajra}, don't say {ka gleki} either. Note: In older Lojban, you'll often see phrases like {leka mi gleki} for "the property of me being happy". That's because we used to not know any better, and were treating Lojban properties like 'normal properties'. The proper way to say this is {lenu mi gleki}, or {ledu'u mi gleki}, or if you want to emphasise that the property "x1 is happy" is being applied to you, {leka ce'u gleki kei poi ckaji mi} -- a literal translation of "the property 'x1 is happy' as applied to me". Sometimes you'll want to speak of properties of applying to two entities at once. For example, the cop wants to know who talked about the heist, and to who: {le pulji cu djica lenu djuno ledu'u makau tavla makau le nu jemna zercpa}. In that case, he's looking for x1s *and* x2s to fill in his {ka}-property: {le pulji cu sisku leka ce'u tavla ce'u lenu jemna zercpa} Note: the ce'us refer to different people, of course; if you want to keep them straight, use subscripts. Which you'll learn about... in some other course. The main use for these is our old friend {simxu}: if we want to speak about reciprocality, we are very much interested in which two places are related in that reciprocality: {mi ce do simxu leka ce'u tavla ce'u lenu jemna zercpa}. There are some reciprocalities that can be distinguished nicely in this way: {simxu leka draci fi ce'u ce'u} is a situation where people take turns writing plays for each other, while {simxu leka draci fo ce'u ce'u} is a situation where people take turns performing plays for each other. What happens if there is no {ce'u} to be seen? In the prevalent view [I'd phrase this more expansively in an actual lesson], there is a {ce'u} hiding there; you don't know where it is, but you're allowed to take a good guess. For example, {le ka xendo} is *probably* {le ka ce'u xendo} "the property of people being kind", and probably not {le ka xendo fi ce'u} "the property of an action being something in which kindness is shown" (although that action *is* frequently what is meant in English by 'kindness'.) Lojbanists have suggested that, like with ke'a, the default assumption should be the first empty place; so {le ka se xendo} would be "the property of people having kindness shown to them" ({le ka ce'u se xendo}). When Blanche DuWhatever says "I have always relied on the kindness of strangers", she displays {le ka se xendo}, not necedssarily {le ka xendo}. The minority view is that you're interested not in any one particular place, but in *all* the places, because you want to consider how the proposition works in general... *** No, I can't do it. John, I understand what arity-{ro} means *formally*; I just don't see why you'd want it. If we factor out the existence of the x2 of du'u (a bogus argument, I still think: just use zi'o if it's that much of a big deal), then I still don't see what arity-{ro} gets you which arity-{no} doesn't, so I *still* don't see what this {ka} says which {du'u} doesn't. Could someone who gets this please write an appropriate concluding paragraph? Lojbab, it'd probably be too much to ask; someone who actually understands what the different *meaning* is? -- == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == Nick Nicholas, Breathing {le'o ko na rivbi fi'inai palci je tolvri danlu} nicholas@uci.edu -- Miguel Cervantes tr. Jorge LLambias