[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [lojban] Re: tersmu 0.2


On Sat, Oct 18, 2014 at 8:36 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:

Right, so we come back to the question of whether the underlying logic
has functions. If we declare that it's purely relational, then all the
constructs which have the form of functions - operators, qualifiers,
non-logical connectives, and I guess also {jo'i} (this list should be
exhaustive) - must actually translate to relations, so it's natural that
they should introduce sub-bridi.

It's certainly true that purely relational logics are easier to reason
about, and that there's no loss in expressivity when eliminating
functions in favour of relations.

But it still feels very counter-intuitive to me that these things which
look like functions shouldn't just be functions.

There's no doubt that they are functions, the question is whether they are primitive or derived. And if we take them as primitive, the strange thing is that they form a small closed class, so you could not do with most functions what you could do with them.

Maybe it's worth considering utility again briefly, in this rather pure
case of operators. Mex may be an obscure part of the language, but I can
think of examples where having operators be functions gives useful
results; e.g.

    li no pi'i mo'e ro namcu du li no

("cu" before "du" is so often forgotten, that it might be worth considering moving "du" to its own selma'o with the grammar of "cu du". One drawback though would be that we'd no longer have "lo du", or at least it would require additional changes.) With the proposal to merge VUhU with JOI that would simplify to:

      li no pi'i ro namcu cu du li no

mex is supposed to make mathematical expressions more compact, but in some cases it makes them less compact.
 
    li xy mleca li re .e se ni'i bo ci

(I'm also assuming here that {li} doesn't introduce a bridi.)

BTW, do we know what the expansion of "broda .i jek tag bo brode" is? Is it something like "broda .i jek brode .i je lo du'u/nu broda cu brodi lo du'u/nu brode" with a suitable brodi?

The first one is also true with the relational semantics, but I'm not
sure it expresses the same thing (I'd translate it as "the thing which
is 0 times anything is 0", so the fact that such a thing exists becomes
a presupposition rather than a statement).

It's odd however to have to read "li no pi'i mo'e ro namcu cu du li no" differently than "lo pilji be li no bei ro namcu cu du li no"
 
Is there a reason not to declare that {na ku zo'u tu'e broda .i brode}
is equivalent to {na ku zo'u ge broda gi brode}?

In natlangs we have the option of not specifying what the logical connection between clauses is, e.g.: "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me". That's four clauses with their connections left up to context. I'm not sure we should eliminate the possibility of doing things like that in Lojban by forcing an obligatory conjunctive interpretation. 

mu'o mi'e xorxes

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.