From thinkit8@lycos.com Mon Dec 03 20:19:39 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: thinkit8@lycos.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_1_2); 4 Dec 2001 04:19:40 -0000 Received: (qmail 3126 invoked from network); 4 Dec 2001 04:19:40 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.172) by m11.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 4 Dec 2001 04:19:40 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO n11.groups.yahoo.com) (216.115.96.61) by mta2.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 4 Dec 2001 04:19:39 -0000 Received: from [10.1.10.122] by n11.groups.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 04 Dec 2001 04:19:38 -0000 Date: Tue, 04 Dec 2001 04:19:35 -0000 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: thoughts on numerical language Message-ID: <9uhisn+s3pm@eGroups.com> In-Reply-To: <0112032211181T.25762@neofelis> User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.82 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Length: 1167 X-Mailer: eGroups Message Poster From: thinkit8@lycos.com X-Originating-IP: 12.224.27.33 X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=71054096 X-Yahoo-Profile: thinkit41 --- In lojban@y..., Pierre Abbat wrote: > On Monday 03 December 2001 19:01, Craig wrote: > > One of the first things I did to make Lojban feel less alien was think of > > English as having a lot of one and two place selbri (verbs). All other > > places are added modally. Lojban just happens to have some selbri with more > > places, but it really doesn't need to. It just makes it more succinct - > > though with your not worrying about pronounceability that can easily come > > from other places. > > I think that selbri fi >=3mei are needed. Any more can be expressed with > combinations of three-place selbri, but there must be some with at least > three. 3-satisfiability is equivalent to unlimited-terbri satisfiability, but > 2-satisfiability is not. > > phma There are some true ternary operators, like perhaps definite integrals. There's probably some true quaternary operators as well, so where do you stop? Binary just happens to be a useful place to stop. You could even have one or zero places, but this would turn out to be very wordy in a spoken language. Might be worth investigating in a numerical language though.