Re: status of ka (was Re: [lojban] x3 of du'

[Nick NICHOLAS <nicholas@uci.edu>]

On Wed, 22 Aug 2001, John Cowan wrote:

> > So "le ka ce'u xendo" means by default "le ka ce'u xunre ce'u ce'u"? No,
> > that's not what you want.
> Ah.  I was implicitly assuming that this rule was to apply
> only in the absence of explicit ce'us.

Looks baroque to me, but that doesn't count for much. So, if I say {le ka
xendo}, accordingly to this, I'm not speaking about being kind, or
receiving kindness, or being a standard for kindness, but some protean
kindness-thing which is the property of no single entity, but of every
entity involved.

Which doesn't sound like much of a property to me (as in, property *of*
something); for all the argling
that has gone on, I still don't see how *every* place is ce'u, just like
*no* place is ce'u, is any different... from du'u. I mean, I know Lojbab
has said this:

>Since du'u arose as a manifestation of a specific
>bridi relationship between the bridi and its expression as le sedu'u, I
>find it hard to think of du'u as a generalization.  du'u deals with
>concrete and filled in bridi, whereas ka without ce'u is the one way in
>which we can talk about what makes a bridi true in an *abstract* sense
>WITHOUT filling in all the places, while still acknowledging that they
>exist.  I thus think of du'u as much more akin to nu than to ka.

But I'm sorry; the places of the x1 (and x2) of du'u can still have zo'e
in them. So I don't see what's so essentially concrete about du'u. If
you're so concerned about {du'u} being anchored to a concrete linguistic
expression, I'd rather you
used {du'u ... kei be zi'o}, than make {ka} a property of everything
and anything.

Could someone please provide a context or an example in which this
proposed distinction
between Lojbab's version of {ka} and {du'u} makes a difference in
language use? If we're going to blow up {le ka xendo} like this, I'd like
to know what precisely we're gaining.

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