[lojban] Re: tu'o du'u (was Re: xoi'a)

[And Rosta <arosta@uclan.ac.uk>]

jordan:
>>> lojban-out@lojban.org 10/02/02 02:39am >>>
On Wed, Oct 02, 2002 at 02:17:39AM +0100, And Rosta wrote:
#> Other jboskepre have used "tu'o du'u", but the abbreviation could
#> equally well be short for "lo'e du'u".
#> 
#> If I'd been designing Lojban syntax I'd allow a selbri to function
#
#I assume you meant "bridi".

I meant selbri, but I could have said "bridi" -- it's just a matter of
syntactic perspective.

#> as a sumti ("mi djuno lo'e du'u do klama" => "djuno mi klama do"),
#> but given the constraints of Lojban grammar it would be nice to
#> be able to reduce it to "mi djuno XOI do klama", where XOI is short
#> for lo'e du'u.
#
#I don't see how you could possibly allow "djuno mi klama do" parse
#"mi klama do" as a sumti without having an ambigious grammar.  How's
#the reader to know it's not djuno mi [klama do] or [djuno] mi klama
#do, etc.
#
#Oh I guess you're suggesting using only prefix notation for the
#predicates, so "mi djuno" isn't valid?  

Yes.

#While that would be more
l#ike normal predicate logic notations I don't think it fits well
#with (very useful) things like bridi tail connectives.

There are workarounds (that, appropriately, would be more
complex than the pattern without connectives. But this is something
to discuss on Engelang, not here, nor even on Jboske.

#> {le du'u} is used a lot by everybody (though {le} is not really
#> appropriate there), and many uses of {le nu} should have {du'u}
#> instead (though maybe usage is improving in this regard?).
#
#Sure, many uses of "le nu" should be something like "lo'e nu" or
#"lo nu" or whatnot.  But I can't think of an example of an incorrect
#"le" with du'u like you're talking about.  Did you have something in mind?

"le du'u" = "each of certain du'u". If there is only 1 du'u for a given 
propositional content, then reference will succeed, but it's a bit like
referring to my head as "each of certain of my head(s)" -- rather
misleading. "le broda" implies the question "Which broda?".
So "le gerku" is sensible, because "Which dog?" is a reasonable
response, but "le mamta be mi" is odd because "Which mother of
yours?" is redundant, though it can also be interpreted as
"She (i.e. my mother)", in which case the {le} is not odd.

--And.