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Re: [bpfk] polysemy of {nai}

{na'i} is in UI and it "has truth value", no?

I don't have any difficulty understanding the idea of moving {nai} to UI in the long run, as {nai} is a modifier which can be applied to basically every word without changing its syntax, and as per John Cowan it can even appear on its own (I didn't know that was official). All of which fits perfecly into UI.

The motivation would obviously be elimination of some redundant complexity in the grammar, making for a simpler and more flexible language?

On 8 dec 2012, at 15:53, la gleki <gleki.is.my.name@gmail.com> wrote:

As it's still a BPFK thread my question is why did you suggest moving {nai} to UI in the long run when it shouldn't have the truth value?

On Saturday, December 8, 2012 6:16:17 PM UTC+4, xorxes wrote:
On Fri, Dec 7, 2012 at 6:35 AM, la gleki <gleki.is...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Anyway, I want all types of negation to fit on the same scheme.
> Last time when I draw a similar scheme I could completely solve (at least
> for myself) the problem of subjunctives in lojban.
> Now it's time for negation.

Negation is acheved with "na" or "na'e". They both have the same
meaning, just different scopes. "na'e" can pretty much be replaced
with "me lo na" and "na" can pretty much be replaced with "na'e ke ...
ke'e be ... bei ... bei ...".

"to'e" is not really negation, it is "opposite" or "antonym":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposite_(semantics)
Calling it "negation" is just one of those weird Lojbanic
eccentricities. "no'e" expresses the midpoint between something and
its opposite, so it only really works with gradable antonyms.

"na'i" is a kind of negation, although what it negates is not explicit
in the discourse. It negates a presupposition, something that is taken
for granted as true, and therefore is not expressed. So na'i says that
a sentence cannot be evaluated as either true or false because
something prior that needs to be satisfied to even make sense of the
sentence is not being satisfied. Once the presupposition is expressed
explicitly, it can be negated with "na", as usual. "na'i" just
indicates that there is something unexpressed that wants to be
negated. So "na'i" is a metalinguistic "na".

"nai" changes the meaning of the preceding word to something with the
same function but different meaning, usually but not always an
opposite meaning. ".enai" for example is not really the opposite of
".e" (indeed it is not clear what the opposite of ".e" would be, not
every word has a clear opposite). ".enai" is a logical connective
whose truth table is related to the truth table of ".e" in some
systematic way that can be explained using negation.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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