Re: [lojban-beginners] Tanru-internal connectives, place structure, non-sense

Not really sure who to quote at this point, so I'll just talk in general.

My opinion on the business of empty places and zo'e is that an empty place is not strictly equivalent to an overt {zo'e}. First of all, the idea that an empty place always equates to an overt {zo'e} (minus place structure advancement) falls apart in relative clauses and {ka}-abstractions, where implicit {ke'a} and {ce'u} are crucial to brevity. I much prefer the idea that if a place is left empty, then it could very well be {zi'o} due to the underlying idea that I subscribe to such that {ko'a broda} implies {zi'o broda}.

So an empty place can give rise to {zo'e} and {zi'o} ({zu'i} is just a special kind of {zo'e} IMO) and in certain clauses, the empty place can also give rise to {ce'u} and {ke'a}. Furthermore, I believe that it is in some sense an axiom of Lojban that implicit information cannot produce a contradiction, va'i that an empty place can give rise to {no da}, since that would result in a contradictory negation.

As for the problem of the place structure of a tanru whose tertau is a JA-connected selbri, I think that the most sensible solution is the toss our hands into the air and let pragmatics decide. If one says {mi jipci je sutra lo ka tavla}, then it would be silly for one to assume that {lo ka tavla} is equally filling jipci2. That's just nonsense, and I think that we should try to limit nonsensical interpretations as much as possible. If you want to explicitly make all the places line up, then do so using giheks; they can do that quite well, and no one really argues about how to interpret {broda gi'e brode vau ko'a}. Yes, it's longer, but that's the price you pay for concision. (I think of that as the length-complexity axiom: precision and length should be proportional as best as possible.) So I think that in the general case of {broda je brode ko'a}, the most sensible thing to say is that we don't know the structure of the trailing sumti in such a case, in much the same way that we don't know the distributivity of a bare lo-sumti. We are thus complying with the length-complexity axiom by making a very short construct such as a je-connective in a tertau have a very vague meaning. The listener is expected to infer the most sensible structure based on context. On the other hand, it is pretty useful to require the x1 of the left and right operands of the connective to line up, and is a very weak requirement, much less weak than that all the places line up, which, I agree, is just plain silly, bordering on totally useless in practice.

.i mi'e la tsani mu'o