Subject: Re: [lojban] RE: set of answers.

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2001 13:01:05 EDT

In a message dated 9/14/2001 8:10:31 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> To me it seems as though there are two aspects to answers that need to
> be disentangled. On the one hand, an answer -- call it an 'illocutionary
> answer' is any information that is as relevant as the answerer's knowledge
> allows. On the other hand, an answer -- call it a 'logical answer' --
> is a specification of the extension of a category (or so I think).
> Sometimes a non-l-answer can nevertheless be an i-answer, e.g. "lo ninmu
> (cu klama)" as an answer to "ma klama", in a context where, say, the
> answer has no more relevant information, or where this information is
> sufficient to satisfy the questioner's needs.
> 
> But my feeling is that interrogatives and qkau involve only logical
> answers -- illocutionary answers are a red herring.
> 

A nice distinction. I think that we will need to allow illocutionary 
answers, so as to encompass cases like "believes" and maybe "same" and 
"different." We'll see what happens as more cases come under the microscope.

<I don't accept that lo'i du'u ma kau broda is the set of answers.>

Does this mean that you don't accept set-of-answers theory-- which I knew 
already -- or that you don't think this is how to say in Lojban "the set of 
answers to the question{...}? Gee, it looks exactly right to me; what is the 
problem.

<Of course this way of eliminating qkau is both obvious and correct, but I 
don't
think that for our purposes it counts as eliminating qkau, for the same reason
as other extensional formulations fail.>

But I am not trying to eliminate Q-kau, only to explain it and bring it under 
rules. It turns out that I can also often eliminate it -- in different ways 
in different cases. So, if what I say is correct, I am content.  

<I think I am now able to offer a halfway decent analysis:

no da ro de poi ke'a cmima la dybiyb ce la tcelsik [-- or cmima of whatever
class of differers --] zo'u
da -extension-of tu'odu'u ce'u mamta de

= D frica C tu'odu'u ma kau mamta ce'u
= Dubya and Chelsea differ in who their mothers are

Now that can be done more simply as:

no da ro de poi ke'a cmima la dybiyb ce la tcelsik zo'u da mamta de

or indeed

no da mamta ge la dybiyb gi la tcelsik

But the longerwinded method comes into its own in cases like:

  X and Y differ in who gave them what
= ... frica tu'odu'u ma kau dunda ma kau ce'u
= ... da -extension of tu'odu'u ce'u dunda ce'u de

Admittedly, this "halfway decent analysis" does not use {frica}, but there
was no guarantee that {frica} is logically sound, and hence no guarantee
that frica could be used in a logically explicit formulation.>
Well, all the cases of {frica} I have dealt with come down eventually to 
some {na du}, so eliminating {frica} seems part of this aprticular game. The 
rest of you analysis seems to work OK , though I don't yet see that if 
follows from a general theory (that is, I don't see how to make the right 
moves yet. I'll practice on a few more).