Subject: Re: mine, thine, hisn, hern, itsn ourn, yourn and theirn (was[lojban] si'o)

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 25 Aug 2001 22:39:38

la nitcion cusku di'e

>I mean, honestly, if you ignore the gismu list's definition of {moi},
>"*ordered* by rule x3", then there is in principle no reason why you can't
>use any 3-place gismu for any other.

I don't ignore it, I generalize it. If we order all hands by
who they belong to, which hand do you think will correspond to
Alice?

>My beef isn't that you're using sumti as ordinals --- though I think it a
>barbarism.

I think it's the most rational extension possible of {<number> moi}.
It also provides us with a very useful meaning, and it does not
contradict anything in previous usage or anything that the Book says.
I'm really surprised that you and pc are so vehemently opposed. If it
really is such a bad idea it won't catch on. If there were a competing
meaning I could understand, but there isn't.

>My beef is that, if you advocate {memimoi} as a generic
>expression for "mine", you must dispense with any notion of ordering,
>because "yours" vs. "mine" in general doesn't have a sense of ordering (as
>in fact you have.)

Why is it so crucial that moi refers to a "more than" type of
ordering and not to an arbitrary order simply defined by a set
of indices?

>I mean, when the Duchess takes Alice's hand, and she
>takes {le me la alis. moi}, {me la alis moi befi ma poi se porsi?}

{be fi le ka ce'u xance makau}, the sequence defined by whose hand
the hand is, indexed by behanded beings.

>Like I say, if you use {zu'i pe mi}, you'll be understood immediately, you
>won't leave metaphysical questions dangling, and you can go about your
>business actually telling a story.

I'm not so sure {zu'i} doesn't bring in metaphysical questions,
but that's not the point, you could use {zo'e}. I find {memimoi}
orders of magnitude more elegant.

>Unless, of course, you want to use Lojban not in the most clear way, but in
>the most exotic way (for reasons of personal creativity, or Sapir-Whorf, or
>whatever.) Which I'm fast realising many here do...

Neither the most clear nor the most exotic, the most elegant in
this case. (By my standard of elegance, bien sûr)

>Btw, there are two quite substantial chunks of Lojban in my 'retractions
>Part 2' message. Yet to see anyone even respond to them, let alone comment
>on their usage... (Does that mean my usage doesn't decide anything? :-)

I meant to go back to them, but there's been so much traffic lately...

>.i mi ji'a xenru .u'i lenu do na tinbe zu'i pe le gencukta lenu do jimpe zo
>ba'o poi sumti tcita...

i xu zu'i pe le gencukta cu du le finti be gy

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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