Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: noxemol ce'u

From: And Rosta <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 18:59:42 +0100

>>> <[email-masked]> 09/25/01 10:27pm >>>
#Both the mother-of function and the property of having a mother are 
#functions, one to mothers and one to propositions.  
[...]
#<It must be me that is missing something, since, as I say above, I think the
#way is {tu'odu'u/ka ce'u mamta ce'u}. This is standard uncontroversial
#Lojban.>
#
#And again, what you are missing is that that is a function which gives 
#propositions (as the {du'u} versions says) while we are talking (well, I am; 
#you are confused) about a function that gives individuals.

You are right. I did not understand what you meant by 'function'.
I don't know how to refer to functions in Lojban, but I might be able
to form an opinion if you could give some examples from ordinary English
where we refer to functions. Or is it something that comes up only in
technical logical and mathematical discussion? For example, are
'age', 'height', 'place of birth' functions? If so, then I think I can
see how you ended up talking about functions, for it does seem
that in current Lojban, {tu'odu'u ma kau mamta ce'u} would be the 
normal way of talking about the mother-of function. 

You must have been through this already, and ended up disagreeing
with it, but by my limited understanding so far, those look to be the
ways of talking about functions...

#bigness = tu'odu'u ce'u barda
#
#is that not an example of ^xFx?>
#
#It is indeed. And the point is? The request was for an example of ^xf<x>(I 
#am writing a paper for my website on the language of Logic and how it relates 
#to the logical language to remind or inform people who get into these 
#discussions just what it is we are talking about.)

Okay. That could be helpful. Your < > notation didn't correspond to any
notation I am familiar with.

#<However, normally a bridi preserves its meaning when subordinated (e.g.
#placed within an abstraction), so if {la djoun mamta ke'a} and {la djoun
#mamta ce'u} have a certain meaning as main clauses then that meaning
#ought to preserved when the bridi is subordinate. And that would then
#seem to stymie the meaning that ce'u and ke'a already have when
#within ka/du'u and noi bridi.>
#
#I don't find this particularly persuasive, since it is inside out. We have 
#these critters well-defined in subordinate positions and not as main clauses, 
#so we can't say that the main clause meaning stymies the subordinate meaning. 
# We might say that it is hard to imagine a main clause meaning that would not 
#stymie the subordinate clause meaning, and that may be true of {kea}.  

Put it that way, then. It's what I meant.

#I am 
l#ess sure about {ce'u}. And, of course, we know exactly how it works for 
#interrogatives, which are more or less related to {ce'u} (scope aside).  

???

#But arguing from what we hard a hard time imagining to "it ain't so" is generally 
#an awfully weak argument, since it collapses so easily to someone with a bit 
#more imagination.

That is not how my argument works.

#<We also need to remember that ke'a and ce'u were chosen from among
#competing implementations of semantically equivalent devices, and not
#all devices would have raised the questions you're raising. For example,
#if we had an explicit way of binding variables to NOI and to ka/du'u
#-- call it "goi'i" then we could replace ke'a and ce'u by da variables:
#
# NOI .... ke'a = NOI goi'i da ... da
# ka/du'u ... ce'u = ka/du'u goi'i da .... da
#
#That would have been longerwinded than the current system, but would
#have overtly and explicitly expressed the way I understand ke'a and
#ce'u to work.>
#
#Well, I don't think that is historically accurate about how {ke'a} and {ce'u} 
#were selected 

ke'a predates my involvement in Lojban, but throughout my era it has 
always been well understood as a resumptive pronoun, in which case
my representation seems appropriate. 'Binding' here does not mean
quantifier-variable binding or coreference-binding; it means that
NOI is the intermediary whereby its modificand is coreferential to the
ke'a.

As for ce'u, that was inceived well into my era, so I think I can safely
assert that ce'u was seen as one of the arguments of the relation
denoted by the ka phrase.

I concede that my use of the term 'binding' was a bit loose.

#nor do I know of any devices of the sort you mention (other 
#than {zo'u} constructions like the ones I used -- but those give the wrong 
#sorts of things, as ordinary bound variables seem likely to do), still there 
#could be such a system, and, indeed, the Lojban system may be one such. But 
#that is not specified anywhere that I can find and the use of "lambda 
#variable" cuts against it in the case of {ce'u} (less so for {kea} where the 
#binding is by the gadri -- though this is never said outright).  

I am not competent to extrapolate the consequences of defining '"ce'u"
as "lambda variable". But I would take that as a rough description, not as
a definition. 

#Okay. Well then, yes, in a sense I want ke'a and ce'u to be sometimes
#transitive and sometime intransitive. But I think it is fairer to say that
#I want them to always be intransitive relative to the 'operator' that
#binds them, and transitive relative to everything else. da-series
#variables work exactly the same way.>
#
#This presupposes that {ka} et a few cetera bind {ce'u}, but, aside from the 
#fact that {ka} requires {ce'u} and some others permit it (maybe even require 
#it, but I don't think so -- {ka} really is, as I have said all along, 
#peculiar here), I don't see that it binds {ce'u} in the way that LE binds 
#{ke'a}. On the contrary, {ce'u} seems to contain its own binding operator 
#(the lambda), as witness the fact that it is different each time it occurs 
#(cf. {ma}, which is bound by nothing but itself -- and similarly all the 
#interrogatives).  

Perhaps I can rephrase to say: ce'u is an argument of ka (tho not a
syntactic sumti). That is, ce'u is the way that arguments of ka are
expressed linguistically.

--And.