Subject: Re: The Pleasures of goi (was: zipf computations & experimental cmavo

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 13:12:47 -0000

--- In lojban@y..., "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <lojbab@l...> wrote:
> At 01:39 AM 9/30/01 +0100, And Rosta wrote:
> >The possibility of goi-less ko'a is involved in only one of three 
key
> >arguments for asymmetric goi. The other arguments are (i) that 
no'u
> >serves the function of woldemarian symmetric goi, and (ii) that 
ko'a
> >may already have a referent, which you want to assign to a cmene, 
and
> >this must be distinguishable from assigning the referent of a 
cmene
> >to a recycled ko'a.

Maybe you guys would like to see this, which I posted on the Wiki 
s.v. "goi'a" (http://nuzban.wiw.org/wiki/index.php?goi%27a):

What would be handier (and possibly already exists) would be a 
mechanism to unbind a single bound variable. I say this because 
reassigning ko'as isn't the only reason you'd want to be able to do 
this (besides, it isn't like there are so few ko'as that you should 
ever need to rebind them much, [if you use lerfu|lerfu pro-sumti, 
and why ko'a sucks].) What I see happen much more is overbinding of 
{da}. People get so hung up on ''da''=something and 
''roda''=everything that it's hard to remember that once you've said 
''roda poi X...'' if you talk about ''da'' or ''roda'' again right 
away, you're still bound in that subset of ''da'', and suddenly 
''roda'' doesn't mean "everything" anymore and you have to remember 
to say ''rode'' and so on. ''--mi'e mark.''

''Hence the utility of dada'o.''

Indeed. I therefore propose that ''da'o'' be used to specify 
assymetry in ''goi'' and ''cei'' assignments. Whichever element is 
da'o-ed is considered to be cleared out and overwritten by the new 
value. This may well mean redefining ''da'o'', which I think 
currently means "undefine everything." For that meaning, I propose 
''da'oda'o''. DAhO has the same grammar as UI, near enough, so it 
can be considered to attach to things. ''da'o'' outside of goi/cei 
will retain the meaning of undefining whatever it's attached to. 
This, I think, is a pretty small change, not really munging baseline 
badly, and certainly it accords with grammar. And I think it neatly 
solves several problems at once. ''--mi'e mark''

I second. DAhO is another example of a selma'o that should not 
exist. Apparently the only difference with UI is that ''da'onai'' is 
not allowed, but it has a very useful meaning: when you want to 
emphasize that you are __not__ undefining something. So, whenever it 
is pertinent, ''da'o'' should be moved to UI. --mi'e [xorxes]

(end of quoting)

What think you, And et al?

~mark