[lojban-beginners] Re: Where should I use sets and where should I use masses?

[ianek <janek37@gmail.com>]

On 5 Wrz, 00:24, Jorge Llambías <jjllamb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 4:52 AM, ianek <jane...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 4 Wrz, 09:04, tijlan <jbotij...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >>  Can a set engage in an event?
>
> > Not a set, but its members:
> > x1 (set) has members who mutually/reciprocally x2 (event [x1 should be
> > reflexive in 1+ sumti]).
>
> > "mutually" is not something similar to carrying a piano, together or
> > otherwise. It's a property of a set, not its members.
>
> It's the members of the set, not the set, who mutually x2.
>
> > It's a property of being a cliquehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clique_(graph_theory).
>
> If you restrict "simxu" to the cliques of graph theory, you can't use
> it for something like:
>
> lo zajba pu simxu lo ka ce'u ce'u sanli kei gi'e se morna lo remna pramide
> "The gymnasts stood on one another's shoulders and formed a human pyramid."

So what {simxu} really means? That the graph is connected? Arguments
based on something that sounds good in a natural language are
suspicious for me. The definitions of Lojban words are (in most cases)
in a natural language, but it doesn't mean that they should be
ambiguous.

mu'o mi'e ianek

> It's better to create a more specialized word for the more specialized
> meaning and leave the basic word for the more general meaning.
>
> > That way it's more logical, and hey, Lojban was designed to be a
> > logical language, not an easy language (we already have Esperanto!).
>
> How is it more logical? If a simxu is a set, you can always define:
>
> ko'a simcmigunma ko'e = ko'a gunma lo cmima be lo simxu be ko'e
>
> "simcmigunma" is no more nor less logical than "simxu". It's just more
> useful, so it should get the simpler form.
>
> > Otherwise we can throw away sets completely, because now you can't say
> > {lo ro jbopre ku zvati ti gi'e se cmima mi}. If you can do with masses
> > everyting you can do with sets, we don't need them.
>
> Exactly! For every broda that for whatever reason was defined as
> having a set in x1 you can define a new selbri "brodycmigunma" with
> meaning "ko'a gunma lo cmima be lo broda (be ko'e bei ko'i ...), with
> an x1 argument that is more tractable than a set, so sets are not
> really needed. Sets are useful in a language without plural reference,
> but if you have plural reference it doesn't make much sense to have
> sets.
>
> mu'o mi'e xorxes

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