From cowan@ccil.org Tue Apr 13 21:49:08 2004 Return-Path: X-Sender: cowan@ccil.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (qmail 73072 invoked from network); 14 Apr 2004 04:49:07 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.217) by m22.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 14 Apr 2004 04:49:07 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mercury.ccil.org) (192.190.237.100) by mta2.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 14 Apr 2004 04:49:07 -0000 Received: from cowan by mercury.ccil.org with local (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1BDcKb-0001F5-00; Wed, 14 Apr 2004 00:49:01 -0400 Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 00:49:01 -0400 To: MorphemeAddict@wmconnect.com Cc: lojban@yahoogroups.com Message-ID: <20040414044901.GB603@ccil.org> References: <194.2732bc22.2dadade0@wmconnect.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <194.2732bc22.2dadade0@wmconnect.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.28i X-eGroups-Remote-IP: 192.190.237.100 From: John Cowan Subject: Re: [lojban] the 17 tallest men X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=212516 X-Yahoo-Profile: johnwcowan X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 22019 MorphemeAddict@wmconnect.com scripsit: > why is it so hard to say "the 17 tallest men" in lojban? i would have > thought that this had a standard form in logic long ago, and it would > be a simple transfer to lojban. what's the deal? The standard first-order logic expression is unreasonably hairy. It's something like "The set of A and B and ... and P and Q, such that A is not B and A is not C and ... and B is not C and ... and P is not Q, and A is not shorter than B and B is not shorter than C and ... and P is not shorter than Q and A is a man and B is a man and ... and Q is a man and there does not exist Z such that Z is a man and Z is not shorter than Q." This can probably be improved on, but it obviously doesn't scale. -- "While staying with the Asonu, I met a man from John Cowan the Candensian plane, which is very much like jcowan@reutershealth.com ours, only more of it consists of Toronto." http://:www.ccil.org/~cowan