Re: [lojban] nilbroda

["Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <lojbab@lojban.org>]

At 03:02 PM 02/19/2001 -0800, Nick Nicholas wrote:
> >From: Peter Moulder <reiter@netspace.net.au>
>
> >What about "variadic" selbri like "(nil)du"?  How does one know whether
> >the last sumti belongs to ni or du?
>
> Ouch. Very good point. You either
> (a) give up and don't admit nildu'o as a lujvo (which is no good);
> (b) make nildu'o an exception, and have the ni2 precede the arguments of
> du'o --- which leads to untold confusion;

Why?  We exercise judgement and decide whether to follow the convention, or 
to make a special case.

> (c) leave it as it stands, which is disastrous.

How does it stand?

> One would say at this point that usage and context would always sort this
> out. To which I answer that if I want English, I know where to find it. If
> a lujvo has an ambiguous place structure, it has no business being a lujvo.

A lujvo never has an ambiguous place structure.  There may be ambiguity in 
the conventions for choosing a place structure, but they are aonly conventions.

The book gives guidelines or conventions which we are not obliged to follow 
when it doesn't make sense to do so.  You original lujvo paper, which was 
abridged into the book, listed a fair number of special case exceptions 
from the general rules set forth, and Cowan decided that special cases did 
not need to appear in the book.  The reason this topic came up is that it 
appears that the convention you chose for nil- lujvo does not match what 
you actually did

> (Which would, if anything, go back to (a).)

As wishy-washy as pc %^)

> I knew there was a reason I wanted those ni2 and traji4 in second position.
> Oh well.

If there is a reason, then state it, and we then know that under conditions 
applicable to that reason, there is an exception to the conventions.

lojbab
--
lojbab                                             lojbab@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
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Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:                 http://www.lojban.org