Re: [lojban] du'u & ka (was: ce'u (was: vliju'a

[John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>]

Invent Yourself scripsit:
> On Sat, 4 Aug 2001, And Rosta wrote:
> 
> > I *think* I recall a weak consensus that du'u = ce'u-less ka,
> > which implies that ka must contain an implicit or explicit
> > ce'u.
> 
> I recall Cowan saying something like this too. I would love to hear more
> about this!

The idea is that ka-clauses basically mean "x1 is the n-adic relation ..."
where the value of n is the number of explicit or implicit ce'u instances.
Thus with one ce'u (e.g. le ka ce'u prami mi) we have a property, the
property of loving me in this case. With two, we have a dyadic
relation: le ka ce'u prami ce'u is the relation between lover and
beloved.

So what is the 0-adic version of properties/relations? Propositions.
le du'u mi prami do is the proposition that I love you.
Having both ka and du'u means that we can elide many ce'u instances:
with du'u there can be none, whereas with ka there must be at least
one, and we apply pragmatics to figure out where it was elided from.

-- 
John Cowan cowan@ccil.org
One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore
--Douglas Hofstadter