Subject: Re: [lojban] noxemol ce'u

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2001 09:27:30 EDT

In a message dated 9/19/2001 12:33:54 AM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> I'm getting this annoying feeling that, just as historically bound-ka has
> been taken to be a property, and free-ka a quality, so here to bound-ni
> has been taken to be a property, and free-ni a quantity.
> 

I do hope someone will explain this bound/free bit again -- not to mention 
the difference between a property and a quality. The first difference seems 
to be enitrely contextual, the second non-existent.

<1) Say sentences where ni2 arises (as bound-ni) are wrong, and that you
shouldn't say {le pixra cu cenba le ni ce'u blanu [kei]} at all, but {le
pixra cu cenba leka leni ce'u blanu cu barda};

2) (Messier, but I think far more desirable): do type-coercion: say that
you're using ni to talk about a ka, and that you're doing it kind of
elliptically, but without formally marking that ellipticality. So {le
pixra cu cenba le ni ce'u blanu [kei]} would be called a convenient
shorthand for saying {le pixra cu cenba leka leni ce'u blanu cu barda}.
The type-coercion comes in in that clearly a number makes no sense as the
x2 of cenba, as you rightly point out, so you behind-the-scenes turn it
into something that does make sense.>

Would now be a good time to remind people that {cenba} is defined as 
"x1 varies/changes in property/quantity x2 (ka/ni) in amount/degree x3 under 
conditions x4" and so is a lousy example for making the (rather dubious) 
point?
I suppose one could dredge up another brivla where the list actually says 
only {ka} but where {ni} makes sense, though none of the ones used in recent 
cases happens to be such.

<I haven't been tuned in, so I may have misstepped here; but surely we
don't want to start saying that a mother is the difference between Dubya
and Chelsea. People aren't differences. Properties are differences. "The
difference between Dubya and Chelsea is the fact that Dubya's mother is
Babs, and Chelsea's mother is Hillary." Sounds to me like {la dubias.
frica la tcelsis. leka makau mamta ce'u}. I see why you might want things
to be differences or variations, so you can put {ni} in there with a free
conscience; but that sounds mighty muddled to me. I mean, what is the
difference extensionally, {la xilyris. fa'u la barbaras.}? Yuck.>

You might want to check back. Yes, people are not differences, but things 
differ in the values they give as arguments to functions, which values may be 
people. They differ, of course, in the function, not the value of it. W and 
Chelsea also differ in their mothers (as in their heights and their genders) 
{la dubias frica la tclsys le mamta be ce'u} . The extension of a function 
is a set of ordered pairs with the property that no two ops have the same 
first member.