[lojban] Re: Minimal Lojban

[John E Clifford <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

--- Jorge Llambías <jjllambias2000@yahoo.com.ar>
wrote:

> 
> --- John E Clifford wrote:
> > --- Jorge Llambías wrote:
> >  
> > > TUhE-TUhU, otherwise you can't get all
> > > groupings of the 
> > > connectives. (If you use GA GI instead if I
> JA
> > > you don't 
> > > need these.)
> >  
> > My favorite argument for Polish notation. 
> 
> Is GA GI strictly Polish, given the GI? The
> more
> general gek gik, which includes things like
> {genai ... 
> ginai ...} does not even have the full operator
> content in front.

Well, it isn't Lukasiewicz, so call it
"forethought."   The {gi} is not the problem,
since it is only there because you can't
otherwise always tell where the first component
ends (cf. RPN from HP); the fact that {gi} can
carry logical information is very unPolish,
though it is merely a typographical variant of
what Polish would use, namely a negation on the
following component (or, I suppose,
theoretically, the preceding).  

> > Do we
> > really need TUhE-TUhO?  Aren't there a set of
> > reverse grouping and hierarchical grouping
> > markers that pretty much cover all cases
> (there
> > used to be)? 
> 
> There is {I jek BO} for tight grouping but that
> won't cover
> all cases. For example {broda i ja tu'e brode i
> jo brodi 
> i je brodo tu'u} can't be done with just {bo}.
> (This is all
> purely theoretical though, because such
> constructions are
> utterly incomprehensible without detailed
> analysis anyway.)

Alas, painfully true -- and true even of extended
cases using only regular connectives of any kind.
 
Standard logic -- when it wants to dispense with
parentheses without going Polish -- has a system
of depth tags (usually something like ', '', ...
or ., :, and so on).  Can {bo} be repeated to
give closer and closer bindings?  Or subscripted?
 This won't make matters clearer, of course, but
it does give the system completeness.
Subscripting the connectives would also match at
least one logician's practice.  But that also
requires a kind of forethought that is nt likely
to come to the speaker any more than it is likely
to be interpretable by the hearer (your example
would be
{p ija q ijobobo (or {boxire} -- or {pa},
depending on convention -- or just {xire}) r
ijebo s})