Draft ka lesson (was Re: status of ka

[Nick NICHOLAS <nicholas@uci.edu>]

On Wed, 22 Aug 2001, John Cowan wrote:

> Nick NICHOLAS wrote:

> No, it is a relation (the 3-place relation between a kind person, a
> recipient of kindness, and a kind behavior).  It is a reified
> predicate of arity 3, just as one-ce'u leka-clauses are
> reified predicates of arity 1.

> According to the all-ce'u view, anyway.

> > I still don't see how *every* place is ce'u, just like
> > *no* place is ce'u, is any different... from du'u.

> Not at all, but quite otherwise.  A ledu'u-clause is a reified
> predicate of arity 0.

OK, lemme try and break this down, because one day I'm going to have to
write a lesson on this. In fact, this might as well be the draft for it:

***

When you want to say that happens in the world, you use nu.

When you want to *talk about* saying that something happens in the world,
you use du'u. This has the effect of reifying the nu-clause. In other
words, it takes what was an event, an occurrence in the physical world,
and turns it into an object, a thing, which you can think, which you
can discover, which you can use in logic. (But not which you can say:
that's sedu'u). In English, this is a proposition, or a fact.

Often you'll want to do this reification, but you want to keep one of its
places open. The reason is, you want to consider the proposition, as it
applies to various entities that can fill that slot. For example, when
you're searching for kindness, you want to consider the proposition
"x1 is kind to x2", but what you're really interested in is, what fills x1
in that proposition; not what fills x2. We then say you are considering
the property of kindness. And because properties are the properties *of*
something, that something is the x1 place. In Lojban, such properties are
indicated with {ka}, and what the property is a property of is indicated
with {ce'u}. {ce'u} is a slot-holder.

But a property is still a reification: it's just like {du'u}, it's
something you hold in your mind about what happens in the world, rather
than something that objectively happens in the world. The difference is,
{ka} has an empty slot, and you're interested in the {ka}-clause only
inasmuch as you're interested in what fills the slot. So you search for
{ka}-clauses, to find what will fill the slot. You compare things to see
how well they fit the slot.

And you can have bridi in which the property (with its slot)
is related to a value (which would fill that slot): I am alien in the
property of "x1 is from out of town" (as applied to me.) I am big in the
property of "x1 is tall" (as applied to me.) I satisfy someone that the
property "x1 is intelligent" applies to me.

[Insert here stuff on influence and susceptibility from existing lesson]

What happens when you find the value that fills the slot? Then --- and
here Lojban parts ways with English --- you no longer have a slot; so you
no longer have a property. You've gone back to {du'u}. If {mi mansa do
leka ce'u prije}, that's the same as saying {do djuno ledu'u mi prije}.

Be careful here:
what English (and in fact, most traditional usage) calls properties are
actually considered just states in Lojban --- that is, something that
happens in the world, but without anybody lifting a finger. Being a
runner, aka running, is hard work; so we're happy to think of it as an
event: {nu bajra}. But being happy, aka happiness, just happens, without
any work; so we're inclined to call it {ka gleki}. But that's misleading.
English distinguishes between running and happiness grammatically, because
run is a verb and happy is an adjective. But verbs and adjectives don't
mean anything to Lojban (or to many other languages), so there's nothing
to say you can't say {nu gleki}. As a rule of thumb: if you wouldn't say
{ka bajra}, don't say {ka gleki} either.

Note: In older Lojban, you'll often see phrases like {leka mi gleki} for
"the property of me being happy". That's because we used to not know any
better, and were treating Lojban properties like 'normal properties'. The
proper way to say this is {lenu mi gleki}, or {ledu'u mi gleki}, or if you
want to emphasise that the property "x1 is happy" is being applied to you,
{leka ce'u gleki kei poi ckaji mi} -- a literal translation of "the
property 'x1 is happy' as applied to me".

Sometimes you'll want to speak of properties of applying to two entities
at once. For example, the cop wants to know who talked about the heist,
and to who: {le pulji cu djica lenu djuno ledu'u makau tavla makau le nu
jemna zercpa}. In that case, he's looking for x1s *and* x2s to fill in his
{ka}-property: {le pulji cu sisku leka ce'u tavla ce'u lenu jemna zercpa}

Note: the ce'us refer to different people, of course; if you want to keep
them straight, use subscripts. Which you'll learn about... in some other
course.

The main use for these is our old friend {simxu}: if we want to speak
about reciprocality, we are very much interested in which two places are
related in that reciprocality: {mi ce do simxu leka ce'u tavla ce'u lenu
jemna zercpa}. There are some reciprocalities that can be distinguished
nicely in this way: {simxu leka draci fi ce'u ce'u} is a situation where
people take turns writing plays for each other, while {simxu leka draci fo
ce'u ce'u} is a situation where people take turns performing plays for
each other.

What happens if there is no {ce'u} to be seen?

In the prevalent view [I'd phrase this more expansively in an actual
lesson], there is a {ce'u} hiding there; you don't know where it is, but
you're allowed to take a good guess. For example, {le ka xendo} is
*probably* {le ka ce'u xendo} "the property of people being kind", and
probably not {le ka xendo fi ce'u} "the property of an action being
something in which kindness is shown" (although that action *is*
frequently what is meant in English by 'kindness'.) Lojbanists have
suggested that, like with ke'a, the default assumption should be the first
empty place; so {le ka se xendo} would be "the property of people having
kindness shown to them" ({le ka ce'u se xendo}). When Blanche DuWhatever
says "I have always relied on the kindness of strangers", she displays {le
ka se xendo}, not necedssarily {le ka xendo}.

The minority view is that you're interested not in any one particular
place, but in *all* the places, because
you want to consider how the proposition works in general...

***

No, I can't do it. John, I understand what arity-{ro} means *formally*;
I just don't see why you'd want it. If we factor out the existence of the
x2 of du'u (a
bogus argument, I still think: just use zi'o if it's that much of a big
deal), then I still don't see what arity-{ro} gets you which arity-{no}
doesn't, so I *still* don't see what this {ka} says which {du'u} doesn't.
Could someone who gets this please write an appropriate
concluding paragraph? Lojbab, it'd probably be too much to ask; someone
who actually understands what the different *meaning* is?

-- 
==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==  ==
Nick Nicholas, Breathing  {le'o ko na rivbi fi'inai palci je tolvri danlu}
nicholas@uci.edu                   -- Miguel Cervantes tr. Jorge LLambias