RE: [lojban] Q

["And Rosta" <a.rosta@dtn.ntl.com>]

Avital:
> > On Mon, 16 Apr 2001, biomass@hobbiton.org wrote:
> > >How would I say, "I don't know if that is true", as opposed to "I 
> don't 
> > >know that it is true", which would be  <mi na djuno lenu ti drani>? 
> I 
> > >guess this has been asked several times, but, well, one again? 
> Please?
> > 
> > Actually {mi na djuno lenu ti drani} is "I don't know the event of 
> this thing
> > being correct", which doesn't make much sense. I use {mi na djuno 
> ledu'u ti
> > drani} for "I don't know that this is correct" and {mi na djuno lejei 
> ti drani}
> > for "I don't know whether this is correct".
> 
> a) You're right. I meant to use <du'u>.
> b) That's nice. Thanks.
> c) For all of you wanting to find a situation where two different 
> abstractions can be used with a difference in meaning, here it is.

Did anyone in the recent thread on abstractions actually say that 
differences couldn't be found among any of the abstractions? Surely
not. {jei broda} = "the truth value of lo du'u broda". {ni broda}
is "the amount of [some other sort of abstraction]". {du'u} is
a proposition. {nu} is what is commonly called a 'situation' in
linguistics. IIRC Jorge was questioning the utility of the subtypes
of {nu} (and I would disagree with him on that point). 

I may have forgotten some abstractors, but off the top of my head
the only questionable one -- in terms of whether there is any
difference in meaning -- is {ka}, which looks to be a {du'u}
containing a {ce'u} -- or, alternatively, {du'u}, which is a
{ce'u}-less {ka}.

This said, all abstractions could be periphrastically derived from
du'u/ka.

--And.