[lojban] Re: How to reduce the amount of something?

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 5:54 PM, Mark E. Shoulson <mark@kli.org> wrote:
> On 09/30/2009 04:48 PM, chris kerr wrote:
>> Someone on IRC asked for a lojban translation of:
>>
>> Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially
>> reduce the size of its nuclear weapons arsenal, and/or substantially
>> reduce and restrict the role and/or missions of its nuclear weapons arsenal.
>>
>> I came up with:  .i xusra lo du'u ma'a nitcu lo nu lo mergu'e ga jdika
>> lo ni ri ratske xarci ku gi jitro lo zu'o pilno lo ra ratske xarci

(I suggest "jdice" rather than "xusra" for "resolve". Also, if "ri" is
"lo mergu'e", you want "te xarci", the extent to which the US is
nuclear-weaponed, not the extent to which the US is a nuclear weapon.
Or maybe you wanted to say "lo ri ni".)

>> But there is something not right with using {ni} to talk about reducing
>> the number of nuclear weapons.
>
> Someone remind me: is it not the case that you can't use {ni} (or any
> abstractor) for things like this, because {lo ni...} is equivalent to
> some *number* (and you can't reduce 41,291)?  I seem to recall that {ni}
> and {jei} had lost most of their utility due to this instantiation in
> extension, and that was why we had to bring in {kau}.

I don't think this was ever settled one way or the other. The
definition seems to say "ni" is a se klani, but mostly it is used as a
klani. I use it to mean "the extent to which (bridi) is true". For
"whether" I always use "lo du'u xu kau" rather than "lo jei".

mu'o mi'e xorxes


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