Re: [lojban] tautologies

[pycyn@aol.com]

In a message dated 2/9/2002 11:09:53 AM Central Standard Time, jjllambias@hotmail.com writes:

I don't remember what you thought of:

   mi ta te vecnu ije makau ta jdima
   I buy it, whatever be its price.

Which naturally leads to:

   mi ta te vecnu ije xukau ta kargu
   I buy it, whetherever it be expensive.

You might want to add some kind of causality connector instead
of a simple {ije}, but the second sentence is still a tautology.

On about fifth thought, {xukau} in a separate sentence seems to have to mean "some monadic truth function of {ta kargu} holds" which is a tautology, since the {kau} allow the negative forms, and the earlier {makau} is then equivalent to {da a no da} and so also a tautology.  But now this does not say quite,  "I will buy it whatever it costs / whetherever it is expensive;"  it just says "I will buy it."  ("and it either costs something / is expensive or not"). The first is pretty much guaranteed by {vecnu4}.
I do think you need some kind of causal -- "despite" would be nice, but I don't know if anything quite does that (though I recall going round on it once, or something close to it -- ahah! {ki'unai} looks about right).  But that would only work if the price were extreme; if it were not, that would be a good reason to buy: {ki'u}, instead.  Maybe this is {va'o} (I will spell it right eventually, I promise) again, though getting {kau} in a {nu} seems almost as suspect as having it run free. And does a tautological condition say anything at all?  And, of course, is the resultant sentence true?  Is there no condition involving price under which I would not buy it?  Sounds like hyperbole to me -- but Lojban has to do hyperbole, too (but mark it?).