Re: [lojban] scalars and portion selbri

[Jacob Errington <nictytan@gmail.com>]

coi

{si'e} is a pretty neat hack for expressing fractions for masses:
ti fi'umusi'e lo se cukta be fi mi "This is a fifth of my book."
ta fi'uresi'e lo se kabri "That's half of the cup's contents."

{va'e}, althought I've never seen it used, seems good for rankings and such:
do pava'e .o'adai ju'o! "You're first! You must be proud!"
.i uinai do rova'e "Aw.. you're last.."

I think that {si'e} can be used to express portions of events, but I
also think that there's a sort of implicit temporal restriction. In an
event of going, there are two important measures: elapsed time and
travelled distance. We tend to measure distances in times ("It's only
five minutes away!") which is good for this use of si'e.

#1 {lo nu mi [caba'o] klama xy cu fi'ucisi'e lo mu'e mi klama xy}
"The event of I [present perfective] go-to X is 1-third of the
whole-event of go-to X"
Unfortunately that's long and repetitive. We can probably reduce this
into a tanru+jai:
#2 {mi klama jai fi'ucisi'e [lo mu'e klama]}

Additionally, when the event is finished (100%) then using si'e
becomes somewhat equivalent to mulno:
#3 {mi klama jai pasi'e lo mu'e [mi] klama} == {mi mulno lo ni klama}

Using si'e implies *time* I'd say, because these MOI cmavo don't know
of the natural implications of "going" such as distance travelled,
etc. Furthermore, in Lojban we must frequently use events as proxies
for their durations. ({mi klama ze'u lo cacra} is equivalen to {mi
klama ze'u lo nu do citka} if do eats for one hour.) We can presumably
use {la'e} to remedy this. Consider someone travelling to place 100km
away. The first 50 km took 30 minutes to travel, but the last 50km
took one hour. The temporal 50% is reached at 62.5km of travelled
distance, but the distance 50% is reached at 50km.

#4 {la'e lo nu caba'o klama cu fi'uresi'e la'e lo mu'e klama}

We can possibly use {ni} to get a
"natural-ish-useful-context-dependent-measure-comparable-thing" thanks
to No One Understands ni (tm):
#5 {lo ni caba'o klama cu fi'uresi'e la'e lo mu'e klama}

Again, using {si'e} as the main selbri distorts somewhat the original
sentence. Remember to use {jai} (and {co} ?) to achieve a more natural
(egoistical? :P) structure:

#6 {mi jai fi'u re si'e co ni klama xy} "I'm halfway to X."

mu'o mi'e la tsani

On 13 July 2012 11:15, djandus <jandew@gmail.com> wrote:
> So, I'm really hoping this is straightforward.
>
> A long time ago, I wanted to say to somepony, "I'm halfway there."
> The easy way out is {mi xadba klama}
>
> But then I tell myself, this is Lojban, we have scalar negation, we should
> have scalar progress be easy to express. As usual, at first I found nothing,
> but now I have too many options and no way to tell them apart anymore.
>
> I get je'a, na'e, no'e, to'e. Those are cool. I don't expect them to be too
> useful here. However, it's probably a good idea to go ahead and tell me now
> if {je'a/no'e klama} makes any sense whatsoever.
>
> What the hay is va'e? si'e? seci'u? Which, if any, applies here?
> I have ideas for what they all mean, but the way they're defined altogether,
> especially the unaltered ci'e, confuse the hay out of me. (ciste doesn't
> mention scalar negation at all!)
>
> So you know, my ideal would be a nice, succinct way to plug any number into
> something, like {pi xa ji'i mu} to get "I'm about 65% there." Even better
> would be knowing how the hay to use all these other things.
>
> mu'o mi'e djos.
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "lojban" group.
> To view this discussion on the web visit
> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/lojban/-/4w1f6YTX2I0J.
> 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.

-- 
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.