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Re: [lojban] {detri}




On 09/03/2015 22:48, Jorge Llambías wrote:

On Mon, Mar 9, 2015 at 9:26 AM, Ilmen <ilmen.pokebip@gmail.com> wrote:

• { .i detri fa li re no no bi pi'e mu pi'e re mu }
• { li pa no pi'e vo no cu tcika fo mi }

However, does the {detri} sentence actually have the intended meaning? Isn't {me'o} more appropriate than {li} for expressing dates?

I think dates (and times) are coordinates in a one-dimensional time axis, so I think {li} is right. Coordinates are numbers, not expressions. So for example the expressions "2008-05-25" and "May 25, 2008" both refer to the same date, even though they are different expressions (different me'o, same li).

So, according to you, {detri} is a relation between a timestamp / time address, and an event? This would be an useful predicate indeed, but that seems to be very different from the relation described in the Gimste.
If {detri} has the meaning you're suggesting, then another predicate is necessary for relating a date structure to an event using a specific calendar system, or to convert a date structure into a timestamp / pure number address.

In sentences such as { detri fa li re no no bi pi'e mu pi'e re mu }, it seems that the date _expression_ "2008:5:25" is first evaluated into a pure number (using some unspecified base), 
and then given to detri-x1, in which case detri-x4 seems to become completely useless, as it cannot be applied to any numeric _expression_ (as all is given to it as input is a pure number). { detri fa li re no no bi pi'e mu pi'e re mu fo ko'a } would then be about as meaningful as { li ze no no no no no cu detri fo ko'a }.

I take detri4 (or detri3 rather, since I take detri to have only three places) as the reference frame, not a place to indicate how to read the _expression_ used to refer to the detri1. Basically it should tell you what the origin and the units are. How to read the li-_expression_ is something that one must already know. Just as one knows that in "li pa no" the first digit is for tens and the second for units, one should know that in "li re no no bi pi'e mu pi'e re mu" the digits show year-month-day. If you are using some non-standard or not well-known notation to refer to a date, you would have to explain it, but basically in the same way you would have to explain any non-standard _expression_ you use to refer to anything else. I think we need to keep the date separate from the words used to refer to it. detri1 is the date, not the words used to refer to it. You could use a different _expression_ like "la'o gy May 25, 2008 gy" to refer to the same date that "li re no no bi pi'e mu pi'e re no" refers to.
You seem to invest {li} with a great power, greater than what I'd have expected. It seems that all we know is that {li} is provided with a numeric _expression_, that it must returns a pure number, but that the function/algorithm for interpreting the numeric _expression_ is entirely left to the context (and there's no way to explicitly provide one using {li}). So much more than merely the numeric base is left to the context, it seems.

If so, it becomes difficult to explicitly express which calendar system to use for evaluating the li-_expression_; it seems to me that the speaker would need to use an appropriate predicate for precisely stating how to interpret the _expression_, and avoid using {li}.

mi'e la .ilmen. mu'o


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