[lojban] Re: What the heck is this crap?

["And Rosta" <a.rosta@lycos.co.uk>]

xod:
> On Tue, 5 Nov 2002, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> 
> > This drastically changes the semantics of lojban as I understand them 
> > As I engage in real-time conversations in the language, albeit with word
> > lookup, I feel that I understand the basic semantics pretty well 
> 
> 
> 
> But it gets worse. According to Nick Nicholas, in a recent email to me:
> 
> > zo'e = su'o de
> >
> > ro bangu cu selfi'i zo'e = ro da poi bangu; su'o de zo'u: da selfinti de
> > (This is read as there being a possibly distinct de for each da)
> >
> > zo'e finti ro bangu = su'o de; ro da poi bangu zo'u: de finti da
> > (This is read as there being at least one de inventing all da)

I don't recall this having been agreed. 

Certainly "zo'e = su'o de" is not correct. zo'e merely entails su'o
de, but zo'e could be interpreted as "le du" (= "it"), and indeed
often (quite rightly) is.

As for whether the second sentence could be read as allowing 
different inventions to have different inventors, that'd be something
to discuss on Jboske. I can see arguments for both sides, though my
gut feeling is to agree with Nick. Of course, if the zo'e is left
implicit, you don't know whereabouts it should be inserted
relative to other sumti, so the problem arises only for explicit
zo'e.

I don't see why you're reacting with such horror. People are always
discovering issues like this that nobody has thought of before. It's
inevitable that this happens.

--And.