Re: [lojban] Re: tersmu 0.2

On Thu, Nov 6, 2014 at 8:28 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:

* Wednesday, 2014-11-05 at 19:56 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:

> On Wed, Nov 5, 2014 at 12:54 AM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
> > * Tuesday, 2014-11-04 at 20:23 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <
> > jjllambias@gmail.com>:

> > > And for non-tenses, by analogy I think it has to be
> > > broda .i [tag] bo brode ~ broda .i broda [tag] lo nu brode
> >
> > Did you mean to have a {je} here, and for it to be different from the
> > expansion of {broda .i [tag] bo brode} you gave above?
>
> I was speculating on what the second proposition would be when a logical
> connective is involved. Nothing really makes much sense though.

Is it so bad for it to be {brode}, completing the symmetry with the
tense case?

It's unintuitive for me, it doesn't really fit the surface form. If it's broda we can say things like:

mi klama .inaja ki'u bo mi djica

If I go it's because I want to.

(If I go, then I go because I want to.)

mi ba zukte .ijanai ki'u bo mi djica

I will do it if it's because I want to.

(I will do it if I will do it because I want to.)

> > But in a specific world at a specific time and position, it rains xor
> > not-rains, and in either case there's an event of raining / not-raining
> > enveloping that particular point. So "some event of not raining happens"
> > *is* equivalent, pointwise, to "no event of raining happens".
>
> Are you saying that the domain over which "su'o" quantifies will be a
> singleton? In that case, using a quantifier is very confusing.

Well, I suppose that depends on exactly how events work in the speaker's
ontology. If it's raining somewhere somewhen, must there be a unique
event witnessing that? Or could there be many events - an event of it
raining precisely there then, another of it raining in that locale in
that rough time period, a general one representing this being a rainy
planet, and so on? Must only one of these be in the domain of discourse?
I don't think we should assume so.

I would say that by default we should assume it's one, since it's the simplest option. (But one event can happen more than once.)

But even we did have uniqueness, I don't think using {su'o} would be
misleading. It isn't that the domain would be a singleton, it's that it
would be empty or a singleton. You could use {pa} rather than {su'o} to
emphasise the singularity in the latter case, but you can't get away
from using a quantifier.

If it's just the one, you would normally use "ja'a" and "na", not "su'o" and "no". Using "su'o" or "no" (or any quantifier) strongly suggests to me a non-singleton domain, even if it doesn't logically require one.

> > I don't really know what {carvi} means - it depends on how exactly one is
> > meant to interpret this idea of "implicit tenses" - but I think that by
> > this argument it must be the same as whatever it is that {su'o nu carvi
> > cu fasnu} means.
>
> I think it must be "lo nu carvi cu fasnu". It's not a claim that there is
> some event of raining that occurs (while any other events of raining are
> possibly not occurring). The speaker is just describing an event, not
> selecting it from many of its kind.

This may be a side-issue, but again I don't see how {lo nu} gets you
this meaning, assuming {lo} is \iota. I guess here you really do mean
something more like {zo'e noi nu}?

Probably, yes.

> > So e.g.
> > ca ro nu mi xagji kei mi klama lo zarci .e ba bo lo zdani
> > -> ca ro nu mi xagji kei da poi nu mi klama lo zarci zo'u ge da
> > fasnu gi ba da mi klama lo zdani
>
> I don't have a problem with that quantification, because now we do have
> many nu klama lo zarci, so it does makes sense to quantify over them. But I
> think the second formulation is just a reasonable inference from the first
> rather than a direct logical entailment.
>
> ca ro nu mi xagji kei ge ko'a goi lo nu mi klama lo zarci cu fasnu gi ba
> ko'a mi klama lo zdani
>
> would work just as well, without introducing more events than were there in
> the original.

But then we have a use of {lo} which isn't constant with respect to the
universal quantifier. I thought we didn't want to allow those?

I would say it's a constant. It's the same event that happens more than once. Just as when I say "ca ro nu mi klama lo zarci kei mi penmi la djan" doesn't require it to be the same time-slice of John every time.

But letting that pass, and interpreting the {lo} as a function from nu
mi xagji to nu mi klama lo zarci, what happens when the sentence is
false because there was some time I was hungry but didn't go to the
market (through laziness or foresight)? Are we to have some arbitrary
non-occurring event of going to the market to be the value of the
function at that event of hunger?

No, we would have the event not happening that time. If you allow events to happen more than once, there's no problem with an event happening some times and not others.

> I think if it[{carvi}]'s equivalent to something like that it would have to be
> equivalent to "lo nu carvi cu fasnu" rather than to "su'o nu carvi cu
> fasnu".

If {lo} here is {zo'e noi}, it doesn't really make sense to talk about
them being equivalent. If it's \iota or something similarly definite,
I think we can use your argument to see {broda} can't really be
equivalent to {lo nu broda cu fasnu}: if it were, then by considering
{na broda} we get that {lo nu broda cu na fasnu} is equivalent to {lo nu
na broda cu fasnu}, which it isn't (right?).

I think it's equivalent in the one-event view: whenever/wherever Mr Nubroda doesn't happen, Mr Nunabroda does, and viceversa.

mu'o mi'e xorxes