Re: [lojban] tautologies

[pycyn@aol.com]

In a message dated 2/13/2002 8:10:35 AM Central Standard Time, jjllambias@hotmail.com writes:

1. "du'u ma kau broda" = "is a completion of the incomplete propostion
'ma broda' = 'x broda', where x is unbound".
   The incomplete proposition is 'ma broda'. 'kau' signals a completion.
(Which completion depends on context. {djuno} requires a true completion,
other predicates don't.) Similarly 'pau' signals
the request for a completion.

In what sense is {ma broda} incomplete?  It is, in fact, more complete than even the extension of {broda}, which contains only the truths, while {ma broda} contains all the possible -- or reasonable -- falsehoods as well,  It is super saturated. Of course, it isn't a proposition either, even an incomplete one.  {kau} and {pau},  if they have parallel functions at all (and I can't think of any reason for saying they do other than that both occur in things that get called questions -- and {pau} doesn't all that often given our habit of putting queston words early on), mark the difference between direct questions and "indirect questions." {kau} doesn't signal a completion any more than {pau} does (aren't they suposed to be parallel?); combined with {du'u} it forms a predicate true of members of the questions, answers to it, and with an appropriate gadri, we get a selection from that set, which is what I take it you mean by a "completion."  But notice that it takes quite a bit after {kau} to get there, mainly converting a set reference or, rather, display, into something that can be a sentence reference.  The set wiht {kau} is the same as the set without {kau}, so {kau} doesn't affect things in any way.  It just removes an ambiguity, which, I see, you all have managed to reintroduce at another level, so that {kau} looks like the wrong process and subscripting the right one (with all the attendant problems of which way to build the subscripts).
So, siince the starting point of this whole argument is simply false, I don't see the need to go on.  But, what the hey!

2  So what might main clause "ma kau broda" mean? It is also a completion of
'ma broda'. Which completion? Typically a/the true one, in the context where
the sentence would otherwise be used as a claim.

The main clause {ma kau broda} would be {ma broda}, {kau} being there to distinguish the subordinate form, so dropped for the non-subordinate.  To be a completion (i.e., selection) it would need first the conversion into a predicate and then the selecting gadri, making it subordinate again.  Second step fails.

3. If so, that turns out to be a good way of rendering English
conditional wh-ever constructions.

But step 2. required that the main clause occur where it is asserted and conditiona wh-ever clauses are precisely not of that sort, being conditional and all.  Further, there is already a couple of perfectly good and straightforward ways to do these that don't involve odd critters.  Why make life miserable?