Hello Everyone!
I'm new around here. So far I'm finding lojban to be a thing of beauty, the more I read, the more I am impressed by it's beauty and elegance. I just had a question about logical connections within tanru, as the there seems to be some contradictory statements in the CLL published on lojban.org.
Specifically, the following would appear to be at odds:
In chapter 5 section 6, the example "blanu je zdani" is used and it is stated that the "blueness is independent of the houseness". However, in chapter 14 section 12, the example "la .alis. cu blanu je zdani prenu" is used and it is stated that "the blueness is associated with the houseness". I can't see how both these statements can be true and maintain logical consistency. This inconsistency is used to explain why the rule of expansion to separate bride does not apply on tanru connections.
Would it not be more accurate to say that "la .alis. cu blanu je zdani prenu" is simply not a very good translation of "alive is a person who lives in blue houses", a better translation would be simply "la .alis. cu blanu zdani prenu". Especially since the "live in" part of the english sentence is included in the the translation of zdani, but nothing about blanu implies a 'live in' quality. You could of course say the english phrase "Alice is a person who lives in things that are houses and things that are blue", and while that may be similar semantically, it is clearly quite different grammatically and still doesn't account for 'living in blue'. I realise there is a degree if semantic ambiguity in tanru by their very nature, but other than this instance, the grammatical connections are quite clear. As in the example from chapter 5, "blanu je zdani" does not exclude a semantic meaning similar "blanu zdani" but it certainly does not imply it. Much like "mi cu klama" does not exclude a semantic meaning similar "mi pu klama", one is merely less specific than the other.
Anyway, I'm still very much a beginner at lojban and am probably missing something very obvious. Any thoughts or clarifications would be greatly appreciated :)
.ed.