Subject: Re: [lojban] noxemol ce'u

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2001 17:43:24 EDT

In a message dated 9/19/2001 3:34:02 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> The first *is* entirely contextual, and Lojbab's pretty mcuh agreed that
> his understanding of {ka} is contextual. Bound-ka means that ka is
> subcategorised for by the gismu. What I'm calling property/quality is
> single/double ce'u versus all-ce'u. End of story.
> 

That is, the old standard difference between a quality or property and a 
relation? Why -- aside from Lojban/Loglan's habit of misusing terminology -- 
not just say this then? I don't understand what "{ka} is subcategorized by 
the gismu" means exactly, except that different features of function are 
relevant to different predicates (at a guess). But that doesn't mean much 
more than that different predicates are different:
{frica} and {cenba} look for certain values to be different, {dunli} looks 
for certain values to be the same, {banli} may not care about what the values 
are, just the function.

<Ad hominem crap notwithstanding, what emerges from your subsequent reply
to xod (God, but you don't make yourself clear) is that the gismu list
should not be taken as saying {ni} is intersubstitutable with {ka} because
they're the same thing semantically, but rather that {cenba} is
polysemous, with cenba-1 taking a property, and cenba-2 taking a quantity.>

No adhominem at all, unless you count the implicit stupidity of us all -- 
myself very definitely included -- for carrying on an argument for God knows 
how long about somethign that was not even true, namely that these gismu took 
only {ka} at some specified place and not {ni}. xorxes made (apparently -- 
he has yet to come back on that) a whole theory of two kinds of {ni} out of 
it and you and And seem to have bought the theory and I took it seriously 
enough to try and figure out how it worked. All gone in two seconds on the 
gismu list.
No necessary polysemy either: something about x1 changes -- quality, 
quantity, whatever -- they are all the same (read the beginnings of calculus 
in the medieval treatises on the intension and remission of forms by such 
charmers as Richard Swineshead).  

<I was about to yell about xod's point, because I think that's making a bug
into a feature. But if this is what you're saying (and even if it isn't),
I might accept it. It still looks messy to me, though, particularly as it
opens the door for things like {cenba le creka}: if you can put in a
quantity, why not put in any atomic variable?>

Yeah, changing the shirt is a metaphysical mess -- with {le}. But not sucha 
problem with {lo}.

<>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.

Well, yeah, which is why the {te frica} shouldn't be expressed
extensionally. You're saying {le mamta be ce'u} is such a function. All I
can say is, to me it's still a sumti, so it can't express a relation or
function, qua mapping, but only the result of the function. (It
*involves* a relation, of course.) {le mamta be ce'u} doesn't have the
extension ((Chelsea, Hillary), (Dubya, Babs)); it has the extension
(Hillary, Babs). I want the former her, not the latter.
So {leka makau mamta ce'u} is the only thing that makes sense to me here.>

Who said that te frica was expressed extensionally, it is the function in 
which they differ, not the value of the function (they don't share those 
values for one thing -- indeed that is the point in this case) and they 
differ in that function by having different values. Exactly as they differ 
in ka makau mamta ce'u by being true in different properties that fall under 
it, different values of it, say.  
If {le mamta be ce'u} doesn't contain <Chelsea, Hillary> and <W, Babs>, how 
do we get to the Hillary or the Babs from the Chelsea or the W? It sure 
looks like a function to me. If the extension of {le mamta be ce'u} is 
{Hillary, Babs,...} how can it the be just one of them? In short, if {leka 
makau mamta ce'u} makes any sense at all, then {le mamta be ce'u} makes the 
same sense, only simpler, since it involves only one step through functions, 
not two as the former does (makau to a particular mother, ce'u to a 
particular child). 

I don't expect xorxes to like it, but that doesn't change its status (being 
as good in Lojban as in English). I am a little more surprised that you 
don't like it. But that doesn't change its status either. this whole mess 
has been informative in several ways -- a nice construction (actually 
several) emerge, with a nice theory for them all and we are all reminded that 
none of us is an infallible expert in Lojban. Nor a pellucid writer of our 
views neither.