[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
[lojban] Re: Cake, Pie or Ice Cream?
John E Clifford wrote:
The 'ji' solution to the choice question is very Logjamish; it is easy
to picture JCB cackling with glee over it. But it raises (not "begs"
gawdammit) some further questions, all of which have been raised before
and probably solved. But, I don't remember the solutions and they may
not be in the consciousness of many less-than-decades Lojbanists:
1. What is the question to which "cream", "sugar, "neither" or "both"
are *answers*, not merely side remarks that happen to do the job answers
are meant to do?
2) How does (or indeed, just "Does") the 'ji' solution extend to cases
of three or more choice items, as in the subject line?
3) What about extending the solution to 1 above to more than two cases?
You asked me 2) and 3) way back in 1987-1988 when we were just starting
on the redesign. I recall you had calculated just how many answers
would be needed for 3 terms, and 4 terms, and how many of them could be
covered by TLI Loglan constructs.
We devised a solution, which no one else seems to have mentioned. That
solution was eventually generalized in a different sense, so I am not
surprised that it was forgotten.
The solution avoided ji altogether, and asked for selection from a set
with members specified by lu'i/lu'u. More complex cases could be
specified with multiple set expressions (any 2 of set A) union (any 1 of
set B).
I remember playing with trying to devise questions that might actually
arise, that would use multiple sets, and then realized that we have
"Pick 2 from column A and 1 from column B) as something that does arise
in English.
Now that lu'i has been generalized into a series that serves as a
set/mass/individual/pointer converter, I suspect that there is a lot
more power in the construct than even I dreamed of. But I don't
remember how much of what we were thinking of in 1988 made it into CLL
in 1997.
lojbab
--
Bob LeChevalier lojbab@lojban.org www.lojban.org
President and Founder, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.