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Re: [lojban] {detri}




On Mon, Mar 9, 2015 at 8:21 PM, Ilmen <ilmen.pokebip@gmail.com> wrote:

So, according to you, {detri} is a relation between a timestamp / time address, and an event?

Yes, or between a date and an event. 
 
This would be an useful predicate indeed, but that seems to be very different from the relation described in the Gimste.
 
A date is a particular point in time, not the name of that point in time. I don't think the wording of the gimste suggests that detri1 is an _expression_.
 
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.

"detme'o"?
 
You seem to invest {li} with a great power, greater than what I'd have expected.

I think all "li" does is get the meaning of an _expression_ constructed (mainly) out of digits. "li ..." is basically "lo se sinxa be me'o ..."
 
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.

It will usually return a number, because me'o-expressions are expressions mostly used to refer to numbers, but it could be anything referred to by a numerical _expression_. Even if dates are not exactly numbers, they are much closer to numbers than to text. The same date can be expressed in many different ways, whereas a text is just an _expression_ that can be used to refer to something else. A date doesn't refer to something, a date is the thing we want to refer to. 

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}.

Are we to interpret the two different expressions "2015-03-09" and "March 3, 2015" in different calendar systems, or are they two different expressions that express the same date in the same calendar system? If the latter (which is what I think), then it is not an important function of the calendar system to tell you how to construct (or deconstruct) a date _expression_. The function of the calendar system is to tell you what point in time to use as origin or reference point, and what time units to use to measure from that reference point. 

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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