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

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 29 Sep 2001 16:03:47 EDT

In a message dated 9/28/2001 4:56:24 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> ce'u is in the main clause in {broda le mamta be ce'u}. I thought you
> were wanting to say that that meant "broda the mother-of function".
> 
> > But I see your problem: you take
> > {ko'a broda le brode be ce'u} as a main clause occurrence, which I
> > explicitly deny.
> 
> Right. I'm pretty certain that you're the one out on a limb here...
> 
> > In your terminology, {ce'u} is here bound to the
> > {le} just as in {ka makau mamta ce'u} it is bound to the {ka}
> > (thought the binding is rather different.
> 
> I know that's how you want it to be. But you're inventing rules that
> conflict with a lot of established canon, and for no good reason
> that I can see. Hopefully if you will follow steps (a) and (b) above,
> we will all find it easier to reach agreement.
> 

I can't find this established canon you speak of. To be sure, I can't find 
any {ce'u} not in a NU clause of one sort or another, but I also can't find 
any rule prohibiting it -- and they are called lambda variables. As for the 
[ce'u} in {le mamta be ce'u} not being in the main clause, it is more 
thoroughly subordinated the the {kea} in {poi mamta kea}, so that {ke'a} is 
presumably a mainclause usage. It is totally compatible with its subordinate 
usage -- if it has one -- and so not a problem. The same should then apply 
to {le mamta be ce'u}

<Okay. Rather than quibble, I'll say this: You need to (a) come up with a
small corpus of example sentences that show that we need to be able to
talk about functions, and (b) propose a provisional method for talking
about functions that doesn't interfere with existing grammar (i.e. it
should use experimental cmavo or lujvo or whatever).>

I don't see that I need to show that we NEED to talk about functions -- I 
don't think we do, anymore than we NEED to talk about properties or relations 
or things, come to that. But we do want to from time to time and it is handy 
to have devices for doing this. As for a corpus of example sentences -- I 
assume you mean in English, although you do shift around on this a lot. Since 
I am not clear what you mean by "function" in this context, esepcially since 
all of the examples I have given have not counted as cases, apparently (even 
though they are generally your examples with minor modifications), I don't 
know how to answer. "Bobby, recite your times tables"?
"Sum is symmetric but power is not"? "Hyperpower is hard to define, since 
the 0 case is undetermined."? "They differ in their mothers"? "They are 
interchangeable in their friends"? 
b) goes against my basic philosophy in Lojban and I see yet no reason for 
changing: why invent a new device when we have an unused one handy? I know 
you would rather invent a new one for every quirky variant than dig for a way 
to do it in the given, but that is not my choice.

<For (b), I will start you off by suggesting a lujvo:

x1 is a -function from x1 to x2

e.g.

da poi ro da ke'a se -function ro mamta be ro nei>

Sounds like a useful predicate, once corrected: "from x2 to x3" , but what 
does it have to do with your following line -- the vacuous {da} and {ke'a} 
make it hard to interpret so I am not even sure what it was *meant* to mean. 
Is this suppose to be the mother-of function? da poi ke'a function ro de le 
mamta be de? It seems you have something else in mind, but it keeps back to 
things like the mother of the function.