Re: [lojban] Lions and levels and the like

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Nov 20, 2011 at 10:40 AM, Bob LeChevalier, President and
Founder - LLG <lojbab@lojban.org> wrote:
>
> Since I was largely oblivious of the concept of "modal" when I reinvented
> the cmavo, having only recognized that JCB had made them grammatically
> identical to sumti tcita and used them as such, I would simply look at the
> list of modals that JCB identified in Loglan 1, and pick out the Lojban
> equivalent (and there is one for each of them)

Unfortunately, it appears that JCB was equally oblivious to the
concept. Here's what he had on "modal operators":

http://www.loglan.org/Loglan1/chap5.html#sec5.6

At least he was aware that he was misusing the word "modal", as he
says in a footnote:

"3 We here use the word 'modal' in a sense that differs from its usual
meaning in logic."

I think he should have qualified that as "differs completely".

>> "na ku no da" = "su'o da" and "no da na ku" = "ro da",
>
> I thought "naku noda" = "ro da", but I may be half asleep.  I'm not sure of
> your version.

"Not nothing" is "something", "Nothing not" is "everything".


> I just (finally) looked up modal logic in Wikipedia to perhaps gain some
> context.  They use two sample sentences:
>
> In a classical modal logic, each can be expressed by the other with
> negation:
> ...
> it is possible that it will rain today if and only if it is not necessary
> that it will not rain today;
> and
> it is necessary that it will rain today if and only if it is not possible
> that it will not rain today.
>
> It seems to me that we have a greater problem in Lojban expressing that
> sense of "possible" than we do "necessary", since "possible" for me has
> never excluded "necessary".

Read again what Wikipedia says. "Possible" does not exclude
"necessary"! It excludes "necessary not".

The relationship between "possible" and "necessary" is the same as
that between "su'o" and "ro", which is why we have "su'o mu'ei" and
"ro mu'ei", which I should have mentioned earlier:
http://www.lojban.org/tiki/mu%27ei

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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