Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Another stab at a Record on ce'u

From: Nick Nicholas <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 03:37:37 -0700

For clarification, and because I tend to get caught in my own vocab: By
Free {ka}, I mean a {ka} clause which may well contain {ce'u}, but where
that {ce'u} is not necessarily filled in by any sumti in the bridi, or
required by the gismu list. Thus, {mi sisku leka prami} is bounded-ka: the
semantics of {sisku} requires {ka}. And {mi mansa do leka prami} is
bounded-ka: the {ce'u} in the {ka}-clause is understood as filled in by the
x1 of {mansa}. But {mi tavla leka prami} is Free-ka: the {ka}-clause is
being treated like any {nu}-clause, or any {da}, or anything at all you can
talk about. It's ce'u isn't being filled in, nor especially being
concentrated on.

Lojbab wants Free {ka} to be a quality rather than a property. But whether
{ka} is required at some point in the sentence is independent of whether
you want to regard it not as a property (one or two ce'u) but as a quality
(all or no ce'u). Sorry if I haven't been clear enough on this.

And to be fair and just: Lojbab's protaean-{ka} was never meant to be
all-ce'u, for the simple reason that it predates ce'u. It's actually
intended to be no-ce'u; but we've all come to agree that that doesn't make
sense any more for {ka}. "The quality of doghood, in the abstract" is not
in itself a monstrous concept; nor is it monstrous to treat is as all-ce'u.
It is, however, we now contend, not a frequently enough useful concept to
deserve to be rendered in the shortest expression possible, {leka gerku}.

And I at least now think this is a quality, not a property, and {ka} no
longer is about properties. (Which I have translated into Lojban terms
already, 2 paragraphs above.) Further, I have been convinced we would more
profitably be thinking of as {si'o} (at most, {si'o... kei be zi'o} or
{du'u ... kei be zi'o} instead.) I am aware that you haven't bought this
yet; but the precise meaning of {si'o} is to me now a relatively minor
point. The consensus has been achieved where it matters -- as I said in my
own Record :-) , earlier this week.

Nick Nicholas, TLG, UCI, USA. [email-masked] www.opoudjis.net
"Most Byzantine historians felt they knew enough to use the optatives
correctly; some of them were right." --- Harry Turtledove.