From nicholas@uci.edu Wed Aug 29 03:33:28 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: nicholas@uci.edu X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_3_2); 29 Aug 2001 10:33:28 -0000 Received: (qmail 77728 invoked from network); 29 Aug 2001 10:33:27 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by l7.egroups.com with QMQP; 29 Aug 2001 10:33:27 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO e4e.oac.uci.edu) (128.200.222.10) by mta3 with SMTP; 29 Aug 2001 10:33:27 -0000 Received: from [128.195.186.169] (dialin53b-29.ppp.uci.edu [128.195.186.169]) by e4e.oac.uci.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id DAA15512 for ; Wed, 29 Aug 2001 03:33:26 -0700 (PDT) X-Sender: nicholas@e4e.oac.uci.edu Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 03:37:37 -0700 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Another stab at a Record on ce'u From: Nick Nicholas 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. nicholas@uci.edu www.opoudjis.net "Most Byzantine historians felt they knew enough to use the optatives correctly; some of them were right." --- Harry Turtledove.