[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: RV: na'e entails na?
Ok, once again I have been persuaded by And to change my
mind. My position now is that na'e by itself does not entail na.
It only does so when the selbri in question partitions its domain
into exclusive regions (I try to explain what I mean by this below).
>For example, everyone is either citizen of France or citizen of
>some other country. [NB INCLUSIVE OR] I want to describe
>the latter group as "na`e fraso zei selgugde"
[...]
> but will not be
>able to if everyone bar me gets their way!
I now agree with your position, as long as it is clear that {na'e broda}
asserts not just any relationship other than broda. It must claim that a
relationship from a very reduced group holds among the arguments.
For the case of fraso, the relationships that may hold can be glico,
dotco, spano, brito, etc, but not for example ropno, since {ko'a ropno}
does not allow us to conclude that {ko'a na'e fraso}. In the case of
glico we cannot have brito as one of the possible "others", and so on.
How this very restricted group of relationships is selected is the
difficult part, and probably very context dependent. In many cases
the domain of arguments gets partitioned into exclusive regions
by the predicates, and then na'e does entail na. For example,
taking {zmana'u} to mean "x1 is positive", then {ko'a na'e zmana'u},
"k is non-positive", does entail {ko'a na zmana'u}, because the only
possibilities left are that k is negative or that k is zero. All other
relationships that may be true of ko'a are irrelevant.
With this strong restriction, I think there isn't really that much of
a distance between the strong and weak forms of na'e. In many
cases it makes no difference which one we choose. I prefer the
weak form because, as And pointed out, the strong form can be
easily obtained with an end-of-bridi naku, whereas the weak
form cannot.
co'o mi'e xorxes
From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sat Sep 20 08:02:42 1997
for <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>; Sat, 20 Sep 1997 08:02:38 -0500 (EST)
Message-Id: <199709201302.IAA03721@locke.ccil.org>
Reply-To: bob@rattlesnake.com
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: bob@MEGALITH.RATTLESNAKE.COM
Subject: Re: na`e
X-To: lojban@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
In-Reply-To: <199709200742.DAA16997@access1.digex.net> (message from Logical
Language Group on Sat, 20 Sep 1997 03:42:38 -0400 (EDT))
X-Mozilla-Status: 0011
Content-Length: 1743
I am puzzled over the confusion. Here are three utterances:
1. The cat sits on the chair.
lo mlatu ca'o vreta lo stizu
<What is truly a cat is in the continuative of
reclining/resting on what is truly a chair.>
2. It is false that the cat sits on the chair.
lo mlatu na ca'o vreta lo stizu
3. The cat sits otherwise than on the chair.
lo mlatu ca'o na'e vreta lo stizu
The latter utterance contains *two* propositions:
a. That it is false that the cat sits on the chair; and,
b. that some other proposition is true.
to ra'unai lo mlatu ca'a vreta lo cuktykajna toi
(Incidentally, the cat actually reposes on a
book-type-of-counter/shelf.)
Why do I make this interpretation? Here are extracts from a fairly
recent, but pre-baselined copy of the reference grammar:
Chapter 10:
Unlike contradictory negation, scalar negation asserts a truth:
that the bridi is true with some tense other than that specified.
The following examples are scalar negation analogues of Examples
18.1 to 18.3:
18.5) mi na'e pu klama le zarci
I [non-] [past] go-to the market.
I go to the market other than in the past.
Chapter 15:
But what exactly does na'e negate? Does the negation include only
the gismu klama, which is the entire selbri in this case, or does
it include the le zarci as well? In Lojban, the answer is
unambiguously ``only the gismu''. The cmavo na'e always applies
only to what follows it.
--
Robert J. Chassell bob@rattlesnake.com
25 Rattlesnake Mountain Road bob@ai.mit.edu
Stockbridge, MA 01262-0693 USA (413) 298-4725