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Re: [lojban] Tags and bridi operators

la .xorxes. cu cusku di'e

On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 9:39 PM, selpa'i <seladwa@gmx.de
<mailto:seladwa@gmx.de>> wrote:

    We know that na(ku), quantifiers, connectives and tenses are bridi
    operators, but what about non-tense tags? Some clearly are bridi
    operators, for instance the causals:


In general, tags for which the rest of the bridi is an argument of the
tag's underlying selbri would be bridi operators. Those are also the
easiest tags to come up with a clean definition for. Maybe all tags have
to be defined that way.
I couldn't agree more. My approach is to treat every tag whose base selbri has a place for an abstraction as putting the main bridi into that abstraction place. For some other tags I don't see an easy way to define them, e.g. {bau}. Some of these tags don't seem to make much sense when looked at from a lojbanic point of view. That's why I proposed to change bangu3 into something that could take the main bridi.
Some tags can be defined in terms of {gi'e} I think, and for tags that really only apply to single sumti places I have an idea about semantic roles determining which sumti place to pick. (cf. e.g. {se kai}) 


    Either we make every tag, no matter what selma'o it belongs to, a
    bridi operator, or we pick some that are operators and some that
    aren't depending on what is the most useful / easiest to use. The
    problem with the second option is that it is a bit annoying to have
    to memorize which tags are and which aren't bridi operators. On the
    other hand, the problem with the first option is that it would
    actually invalidate a lot of usage! For example, from The Little Prince:

          (4) do pu djuno noda fi'o fuzme mi

    The intended meaning is (more or less) "It's my fault that you
    didn't know." However, if {fi'o fuzme} is treated like any other
    tag, then the scope is wrong and the sentence suddenly means "In the
    past, there was no thing such that: you know it because of me",
    which is backwards from the intended meaning.


Yes, it should have been "fi'o fuzme mi do pu djuno no da". It's a very
common mistake with causals. For some reason we always tend to give them
wide scope, even when used at the end of the sentence. Very common with
"na ...  ki'u ..." for instance.

    This is sad news. Should we say {tai} (or even {ja'e}) is not a
    bridi operator and thus save the construction (and usage) or do we
    need to update our usage? Both solutions have their pros and cons,
    but in the long run, consistency seems more important.

    I'd be particularly interested in xorxes' opinion.


I guess it should be "ja'e ... tai ..." rather than "tai ... ja'e ...".
Right. Unfortunately it means that a lot of texts would need to be updated (mostly mine and yours I suppose, I don't know who else uses this construction), and it is also backwards from the way natlangs do it; putting {ja'e} first is somewhat anti-climactic. Maybe a scope jumper cmavo...
There is also the option of "broda be tai ... be'o ja'e ..." to give {tai} local scope as a last resort. 

mu'o mi'e la selpa'i

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