Re: [lojban] Re: ralju bangu be le gligu'e

[John E Clifford <clifford-j@sbcglobal.net>]

We are in danger of talking past eachother and
getting off topic (now, there's a novelty!).  But
I do want to start a bit to one side.  In FOPL a
sentence divides first of all into a predicate
(however complex) and its arguments (however
many).  A Lojban bridi does the same (see
definition of {bridi}).  In both cases, the
arguments are all on the same level (a bridi is
true if the sequence of referents of its
arguments is in the referent of its predicate, or
so). In the grammar, however, arguments get
chopped up any which way, depending on where they
occur linearly with respect to the predicate:
aPbcd is [a][Pbcd], Pabcd is [P][abcd], abPcd is
[ab][Pcd]and so on.  Only in the one case do the
arguments form an immediate constituent of the
sentence and are all on the same level.  In the
other cases, they are at different levels because
distributed over different components.  So, for
starters, even if Lojban gets logic right, the
Lojban grammar gets Lojban -- and logic -- wrong
at the very first step. Lojban parses, in other
words, do  not give relaiable information about
the structure of the utterance; at best they
accept all and only legitimate utterances of
Lojban for some different reasons. 
You can say that his problem is easy to get
around in analysing sentences; we deal with much
worse things in English, for example.  But, if we
equate the structures given by the parser with
the actual structures in the language (and this
something we are almost forced to do, since we
have no other standard -- barring our
intuitions), then we get farther and farther away
from FOPL -- and, if we believe the PR, from real
Lojban.  
Now to the case in point. {ralju bangu be le
gligu'e}.  It is a bridi minus one argument (I
assume this is pulled out of {lo ...} or so), so
it ought to divide [ralj bangu] (the
predicate/selbri) and [- (be) le gligu'e] (the
arguments)(the dash is for the term bound up in
{lo} or whatever).  It does instead break into 
[ralju][bangu be le gligu'e], where now the
predicate is broken up as well as the arguments 
(this is all a portion matched by the missing
first argument of the selbri).  Now, to be sure,
this grouping could make sense, but it is for a
derivative structure, not the primary one,
pred+arg.  In this structure, the argument to
{bangu} really is at a different (subordinate)
level, down two in Lojban so at leat one in logic
(given the at logical same level is doen one in
Lojban). The Lojban that would give this
structure without a doubt is {ralju be lo bangu
be le glicu'e}.  Now, given the indefiniteness of
sources  for tanru, this might be a source for
{ralju bangu} but it would be a surprising one. 
We would expect {bangu ralju} on the "lion
hunter" model, where  the missing x1 as a kind of
ralju -- as in the long form, rather than a kind
of bangu, as in the tanru. (To be sure, the
missing x1 IS a knd of bangu, but that is
inferential from the way that [ralju} works, not
sometyhing said in the form alone.) 
Since the form we have is not br but rb, we are
justified (even if ultimately wrong) to take it
that it has a different source.  the obvious one
is a "white hunter" tanru "x is a language of y
and x is a principal one among the languages of
y", x([rb]y) rather than x(r[by]). This
interpretation makes the expression explainable
under the same rules as are applied with the
simple xPy case, whereas the other requires a new
rule which is nowhere motivated in the expression
itself, contrary to the general principle that
deviations from the norm should  be marked and
the norm unmarked (this latter being violated as
well, since, in Lojban, the simple case requires
additional marks).
So, my point that Lojban does a lousy job of
representing logic comes down to a couple of
possibilities when illustrated by this case: 1)
the analysis that the grammar gives is what was
intended, in which case the principle about
marking is violated as is the simple rule for
arguments at the same depth ({le glicu'e} appears
to be at the same depth as the missing x1 but is,
in fact, at least one level lower) and the
definition of "truth" has to be suitably modified
(despite appearances this is the bear structure
of a one place predicate, rather than a two place
predicate with one place filled).  2) On the
other hand, if what is meant is the two-place
relation "is the principal language of," as
appears from the surface structure, then the
grammar's analysis is a total miss -- or, I
suppose, requires yet another set of rules to get
back to what was meant in the first place.  In
either way, the transparent connection between
bridi and proposition is even more complicatedx
than it was in the simple cases.