Re: [lojban] Tidying notes on {goi}

[pycyn@aol.com]

In a message dated 7/27/2001 5:37:18 PM Central Daylight Time,
jjllambias@hotmail.com writes:

><
>In {da goi la alfas} la alfas cannot have a previous referent.
>If it does, then it is gobbledygook.>
>
>Under which set of rules?  Why can this not (under the presentrules) not
>just be the namely rider on {da}, "there is an x, namely Alpha?"

That's {no'u}. {goi} might end up meaning that when there is nothing
to assign, but strictly it does not.


><
>That's what I thought. You will have to correct you demonstration
>then, as you leave xy dangling unassigned in the middle of it:>
>
>Ummm!  I thought that was your example; it isn't mine (who else was in this
>discussion?)

You used it in actual usage, not as an example now but some 800
messages back, in the demonstration that no number is the highest
number. That's what I remembered when And asked for a way to use
names as bound variables. I found your {da goi xy} back then very
elegant and useful, but you can't do a general da'o so as to recycle
da, and then keep using xy with its original binding.

ahso:
noda zo'u ge da numcu gi node  numcu gi'e balzma da da'o.i .i ni'ibo da'i ge
da goi xy numcu gi node balzma xy .i ku'i rodi ganai di numcu gi le sumji be
di bei li pa cu numcu da'o .iseni'ibo le sumji be xy bei li pa cu numcu.i
ji'a rodi zo'u le sumji be di bei li pa cu balzma di da'o .iseni'ibo lesumji
be xy bei li pa cu balzma xy .iseni'ibo di no'u le sumji be xy bei li pa zo'u
ge di numcu gi di balzma xy .i ku'i di'u natfe le se sruma .iseni'ibo da'inai
noda zo'u ge da numcu gi node gu'e numcugu'i balzma da .i di'u je'urja'o te
zukte

I said I overused {goi}.  Here what I have done is use {goi} like the
mathematicians' "call it x" with a (still) bound variable.  xy nowhas that
value, the theory goes, even if the bound variable is deleted.  I realize now
that there is another possibility for this, namesly that, as da varies,so
does xy, but I find that less useful or likely even.  Of course, you don't
believe in the selective power of quantifiers (I keep getting my two teachers
who fought this fight in the 70's confused, so I don't remember whose camp
that puts you in), so you deny that the first step here is legitimate --
handing off the value of the variable at the beginning.  But mathematicians
and logicians have been doing it for 2500 years at least.  Still, it may not
be {goi}.

<My question was meant to be rhetorical. I cannot believe you and
Lojbab can seriously expect us to put logic on hold for five years,
I must be missing something.>

Well, we have two options: find a work-around within current lojban (the main
route, except when we can show that the problem isn't real -- the ideal
situation) or keep a file until the freeze is off (and keep the file hidden,
of course).  So far, plan one seems to be working OK (from most people's
point of view), except sometimes esthetically.

[later]
<One way of saying this without getting into trouble is:

le ci nanmu cu nerkla le barja i le re le ci nanmu cu klama
le barjyjbu i le pa le re le ci nanmu cu cpedu lo'e ladru>

Of course, but that works specifically by not using quantified variables
(explicitly anyhow) and so is not a solution to the problem as presented.  
But IS the sensible way to write anything but the most pedantic Lojban (I
would drop the last but one sumti to just {pa le re nanmu} unless therewas a
real danger of confusion -- as we do in English).