Subject: Re: [lojban] (from lojban-beginners) pi'e

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 21:33:18 EDT

In a message dated 9/14/2001 6:19:36 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> Nice flame.
Thanks! Not too subtle apparently.

<> What new has been discovered about PA and where are these 
> discoveries published?

A while ago Xorxes made an informal grammar of PA cmavo, which was part of a
thread about what PA in various combinations meant. It seemed to meet with
general approval. (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lojban/message/5817)

Of course, I suppose it might not _really_ be part of Lojban history, because
you didn't get to bless it with one of your sacred Records.>

Thank you for the address. Records are for either significant discussion or 
reported agreement on questions. I am running way behind on them because I 
tend to get caught up in some of the arguments and skip others. I alos lost 
a pile of email when either Yahoo or aol redid something. But, in any case, 
I don't see xorxes opinions as being either in a running discussion nor a 
consesnsu answer to a question, so I don't see that they need a record -- yet.

<In the first go-round of the date argument, I saw nobody mentioning {no'o}
or {tu'o} or any such number, except in a digression about specifying
centuries. They just weren't used then. There weren't enough examples of
using them, and so using them was scary.>

I don't know what was your first date discussion. Mine was in 1977, I think. 
But so far, you are right -- no {no'o} or {tu'o} has turned up -- I can't 
even find it in the centuries part. So, they do provide some handy devices 
for the future, but don't seem to change the basic issue at all: I know what 
to put in for day and month if I just want to talk about year, for example.

<You seem to be unfamiliar with the concept of a mixed base. I refer you to
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lojban/message/2716.>
Thanks for the reference; it is good to have a check that I had my concepts 
right according to you (I assume).

<day month year = A B C

C is the units digit. It goes from negative infinity to positive infinity -
which is a strange thing for a units digit to do.

B is the 1/12ths place. Its digit ranges from 1 to 12.

A is the 1/365ths place. Its digit ranges from 1 to 28-31.>
Well, you can put it that way if you want, though it looks peculiar. Why not 
say that A is the units, B the roughly 30s and C 12, which go on because we 
don't have bigger values. Or say A is day, B is month and C is year, which 
does the whole rather more clearly (though requires a bit of outside 
knowledge, which we all have).

<You say I got the bases wrong and I carried wrong. I did neither; what I did
was to write the date wrong (day pi'e month pi'e year) and try to take it to
its logical conclusion. I apologize for being unclear in doing so.>

Well, you got the date right, then misgeneralized an arithmetic procedure -- 
carry goes left only if you are adding from the right: if adding from the 
left, carry goes right. Now, you do have to know which way you are working, 
but I thought -- since you were objecting to it -- that you did. So you did 
not succeed in carrying anything to its logical conclusion; you just messed 
up an elementary calculation. Admittedly, {pi'e} doesn't tell you what is 
weird, only that something is. But, as I said, I thought you knew what it 
was.

<In day-month-year, how do you refer to an event happening during a certain
year? It seems you don't. The lessons avoid this by naming years. So this
year is {la renonopananc.} and the next year is {la renonorenanc.} and the
next year is {la djimbab.}, or might as well be, because cmene are not
analyzable.>

Well, in the ccyymmdd version, how do you refer to an event happening on a 
certain day? Presumably the same trick, whichever of the several available 
you like, will work for the year in the ddmmccyy version. Take your pick, 
even use {la PAdjed}, if you want (though I agree that that is inelegant). 
And the whole point is that we are much more likely to want to talk about a 
day in this month than a year all by itself, so we make the more common one 
easier to say.

<How do you tell me that {la kristoBAL. koLON. pu falnu litru le xasmi co 
blanu}
in 1492, and not during the lifespan of some guy named Pavoso Renanc?>
Well, {Pavoso Renanc} isn't someone's (or something's) name for starters. 
And even if it were, {ca la ...} wouldn't mean "during the lifetime of " 
(though {ca tu'a la...} just might). Actually, {ca li pavosore} would work 
pretty well, at least at a glorking level, since it can't be a day or a month 
or any otehr standard time thingy and {ca} calls for a number that is a time 
event. The harder on is to tell that something takes place this October.