Re: [lojban] Final state of cenba/zenba/etc.

[Ian Johnson <blindbravado@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 6:51 PM, selpa'i <seladwa@gmx.de> wrote:

Many people like to measure all sorts of things on (sometimes ad-hoc) scales. "She is a 10" when talking about attractiveness or "He dove a 9.5" for high diving at Olympia. There are many occasions where one would like to introduce a scale and a number.

Interesting examples. The first I would say is just bad, to be perfectly honest; I know that doesn't feel like much of an answer, but there are certain things that we shouldn't try to retain as they are. The second one is ultimately not ad hoc, and therefore should be expressed as such: {merli lo nu sfubu kei li so pi mu zo'e ne .o bu}. Here the scale can be described in detail, but we aren't describing it here, and it doesn't have its own brivla. At any rate, such things aren't numbers associated to bridi anyway; it's not "her attractiveness is 10", it's "she is a 10 on the attractiveness scale". Similarly, it's not "his dive-quality was 9.5", it's "his dive was a 9.5 on the Olympian scale for diving". The thing being measured is not a bridi, it's still an object or a concrete event, and when it's an event it's not the bridi of the event that is being measured, either.

But you do allow {ni} both with and without a {ce'u}, don't you? I find that odd. Why allow it for {ni} and not for {ka}? I think {ce'u}-less {ka} died out for a good reason, and so in my opinion there should only be one {ni}, either with or without {ce'u}. I prefer it without.

I'd be fine with a separate {ni}-without-{ce'u} cmavo analogous to {du'u}. There are several things that {ni} seems to want to do, and that is one of them. The vague+with-{ce'u} version seems to be the most common by far, however. This is partly because the full version is in some sense not safe; you can't compare arbitrary ni, even when the ni themselves both exist. For example, {lo ni mi xendo cu zmadu lo ni lo mamta cu laldo} is garbled nonsense even when both of those extents make sense separately. Having the outer selbri do the reduction "for" you keeps you comparing apples to apples.

mi'e la latro'a mu'o

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