Re: [lojban] Re: tersmu 0.2

On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 10:52 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:

Back in the situation with five apples, what would
lu'i re plise
mean with your rules? It seems natural to want something definite, so it
literally being
lo selcmi be re plise,
with {lo} having the maximality presupposition discussed elsewhere,
would be an answer. That presupposition in this case forces it to be
a kind; let's call it "sets of two apples". Is this really something we
want {lu'i} to be able to return?

I wouldn't mind actually, mainly because I don't much care for sets in Lojban. But "lu'i" is not the most used LAhE. Those would have to be "tu'a" and "la'e" (and their cousin "na'e bo"), so I think we should concentrate mainly on these three to work out the rules.

"la'e" is "lo se sinxa be", "tu'a" is "lo dumco'e be" or sometimes "lo nunco'e be", and "na'e bo" is "lo drata be" (or maybe better "lo nardu'o be").

"la'e" is hardly ever used with quantifier or logically connected arguments. Those would not be particularly useful with my proposed expansions.

For "tu'a", it is crucial that it doesn't let quantifiers and connectives out since it's very purpose is to create an opaque context.

And "na'e bo" does have its uses. For example: "ro na'e bo ko'a .e ko'e" = "ro lo drata be ko'a .e ko'e" = "all but ko'a and ko'e". In this case, "all but ko'a and all but ko'e" would be less useful.

So, based on "tu'a" and "na'e bo", which together with "la'e" are basically the only members of LAhE/NAhE BO that have relevant use, I would say that the subordinate reading is what makes the most sense.

> So "li cy" is a free variable? And bindable like "da": "ro li cy poi broda
> zo'u li cy brode". So "ro li cy" is not "ro da poi me li cy"?

I certainly hope "ro li cy" is "ro da poi me li cy". Currently the only
exception to that is for the da-series, I think we'd need a very good
reason to add more.

Good. But then is it worth making "li cy" differ from "cy"?

I don't think there's an entirely direct way to quantify over mekso
variables, but how about e.g. {ro namcu goi li xy zo'u} (which I would take
to be an abbreviation of {ro da poi namcu ku'o da goi li xy zo'u})?

Right, but that would work with plain "xy" as well, right? I think making "xy"="li mo'e xy" but different from "li xy" is asking for trouble.

But CLL is quite explicit that logically connected tenses follow the
same expansion rules as logically connected sumti, and it seems entirely
coherent for them to, so I don't plan to change that without a good
reason.

That seems fine, I don't object.

> > So you mean that {lo plise} has to refer to Apple *if* Apple is in the
> > UD, but for contextual reasons it sometimes might not be? But when it
> > isn't, there does nonetheless have to be a unique maximal referent, or
> > else {lo plise} fails to refer?
>
> More or less, yes. The problem is that I don't have a good theory of UD, so
> "if Apple is in the UD" is extremely relative in practice, since it can
> very easily enter or leave the UD as required. For the analysis of logical
> forms we don't really need to concern ourselves with those things.

No, but we do need to put the maximality condition in there if it should
be there.

For analysis of logical forms? I'm not sure we do, since all we need to know is that "lo broda" is a constant (or a function, if "broda" contains free variables).

So... are we sure it should?

Both forms of the gadri seem useful to me. I have been happily using
{lo} without this maximality presupposition, and I think at least some
of the irci have been too.

I think the maximality presupposition can't be properly examined without a clear idea of how the universe of discourse works. I suspect that the uses you have in mind as non-maximal with a certain understanding of UD can be reinterpreted as maximal with a different understanding of UD.

But this goes a long way to explaining why you wanted {lo me ko'a gi'e
broda} for {ko'a poi broda}, where I thought having a maximality
condition would be more natural - you were understanding the maximality
to be implied by the {lo}!

Right.

mu'o mi'e xorxes