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

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 19:44:29 EDT

In a message dated 9/26/2001 12:57:37 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> 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 
> 

I think all of the cases you cite and the rest of the lines on a typical 
personnel form are good examples of functions of the sort I have in mind.  
But in the process of doing that, I realized where (perhaps) the snarl is -- 
back at indirect questions. You think that {tu'o du'u makau mamta ce'u} 
ultimately gives a woman (or a name of a woman); I think it gives a 
proposition. So we may be talking about the same thing and merely 
disagreeing about what says it and how. I think that your view (if I am 
being fair to it, as your cases suggest) is inconsistent, since it would have 
the wrong sorts of things in places like {djuno2}, but I am not sure. I'll 
think on it more, once I am sure I have figured this out right.

<Okay. That could be helpful. Your < > notation didn't correspond to any
notation I am familiar with.>
What notations do you know? I can usually translate.

<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.

#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.>

Sorry if I've missed something, but what exactly, given your argument and 
your agreement of my version above?

<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.>

Yeah, but quite comprehensible. {ke'a}, you are saying, is the way that 
relative clauses in Lojban mark the connection with the sumti to which they 
attach, where it is anaphorized. And that is clearly right. Analogously, I 
suppose you are saying that
{ce'u} marks the places where arguments are to be inserted in {ka} phrases to 
create whatever it is they create (propositions in the {ka} case, right?). I 
agree again, except that I don't see the use of {ce'u} limited to {ka} or 
even NU, as the lambda variables are not limited to predicates.

<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. >

Whereas I take it as a definition and the limitation to NU as a mere 
introductory -- because relatively clear -- example, to be gneralized upon 
along lambda lines. Another case of the fuzziness of Refgram, though 
pperhaps it could not have been foreseen as a problem back then.

<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>
Well, I would say "argument places" because the whole point is that the 
actual arguments aren't expressed -- its a function to propositions or 
whatever, not a proposition. And, of course, {ce'u} is a sumti 
syntactically, as is {ke'a}; otherwise how could they perform thaeir 
function? Maybe not one semantically, though.