From a.rosta@dtn.ntl.com Thu Sep 06 17:57:56 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: a.rosta@dtn.ntl.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_3_2_1); 7 Sep 2001 00:57:56 -0000 Received: (qmail 40012 invoked from network); 7 Sep 2001 00:49:35 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by l7.egroups.com with QMQP; 7 Sep 2001 00:49:35 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mta07-svc.ntlworld.com) (62.253.162.47) by mta1 with SMTP; 7 Sep 2001 00:49:35 -0000 Received: from andrew ([62.253.88.88]) by mta07-svc.ntlworld.com (InterMail vM.4.01.03.00 201-229-121) with SMTP id <20010907004933.NYZZ710.mta07-svc.ntlworld.com@andrew> for ; Fri, 7 Sep 2001 01:49:33 +0100 Reply-To: To: Subject: RE: [lojban] The Knights who forgot to say "ni!" Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2001 01:48:49 +0100 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20010902055242.00d8a7a0@pop.cais.com> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 From: "And Rosta" X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 10499 Lojbab: > At 09:33 PM 8/29/01 +0100, And Rosta wrote: > >On this issue, which I'm agnostic about, it seems plausible that > >whoever wrote the definitions was (na'e mabla) incompetent > > I plead guilty. > > > and that > >the intention was for jei to mean "whether" and ni to mean "how much". > >There are examples in The Book that support these meanings. So it > >is open to debate how binding the mahoste definitions should be seen > >as being. > > Feeling exemplary and in a mood to be stomped on, my original concept of ni > was something like > lo rupnu be li panono cu ni le kosta cu kargu > > In other words it was a quantity or measurement of the bridi > relationship. It may or may not be amenable to ce'u because it is not > clear whether the x1 measures a particular place of the inner bridi e.g. > lo mitre be li panonono cu ni mi klama le zarci, and there is no particular > place that 1000 meters actually corresponds to (the route comes close but > how one measures backtracking and looping could make things complex). > > As I think I've said before, jei was intended as a hook for eventual > implementation of fuzzy logic. If it has an equivalent, it might be jei > broda = ni le du'u broda cu jetnu, but that begs the question if we can't > agree on what ni means. > > My stating these former intentions has little to do with what was said in > the book. I didn't spend a lot of time reviewing that particular paper, alas. So {jei} is properly glossed, by your lights, and those who treat it as "whether" have misunderstood your intentions. As for {ni}, your example doesn't make that much sense to me, but {ni} would gel (or do I mean jive? or gyve, even) nicely with your {jei} if it meant "is the extent to which". That is, {jei} is for degrees between absolute true and absolute false, and [ni} is for degrees of absolute true. I don't mean this as a contribution to a debate about {ni} and {jei]; the controversy of their definition is such that they're best shunned. --And.