Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Binary Language

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 24 Dec 2001 10:05:45 EST

In a message dated 12/24/2001 1:36:10 AM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> How about concepts like "between" or
> "combine" where the x2 and x3 are interchangeable? Or would you simply
> leave those out of your language?
> 

Well, thinkit would say that "between" (and probably "combine") is easy. "a 
is between b and c" is just "a is to the side of b with a to the side of c" 
and if you said that this would allow all sorts of arrangements where a is 
NOT between b and c, he would claim that those all required some other 
condition but that "between" was the natural reading of the simplest one. If 
you strike that down, then he may eventually be driven to the place binarists 
usually end up, making arguments of pairs of objects -- ordered or unordered 
as the need may be (and pairs of pairs or of a pair and an object, and so on, 
as needed). 

thinkit:
<It's just a matter of saying it differently. In this case, one way 
is, man attempts to (sentence) man give book to cat (end sentence) 
(tag) thwarted by (sentence) dog take book from man. The sentence I 
gave could have no other reasonable meaning than the man giving a 
book to a dog (assuming no other tags are given). The second 
mention of the book (in the tag) isn't even necessary>

Well, but the first solution requires a way to make sentences into arguments 
-- which ought to be interesting in this system -- and then a way of saying 
that the man gave the book to the cat, which is just the original problem 
again, not solved by saying that it is part of the solution to some other 
problem (ditto that the dog takes the book from the man). I think that 
dropping the second reference to the book requires a convention that one 
probably does not want to use: that the missing argument is the nearest 
extrasentential reference or the one in the same place or some such. The 
exceptions will be more numerous than the cases and the possibility for error 
rather large (e.g., taking the gap to mean there is nothing there -- a very 
real case -- or that it is an unspecified something -- also a real case). 
since there has to be something in the 2nd argument place, it might as well 
be what is intended.

<It would just be a single true sentence. Man, dog, and book are 
identified as objects. >

But it sure seems to be two sentences both of which (and more beside, I 
think) have to be true for the intended meaning. If either part fails then 
the whole fails: a clear case of conjunction, not subordination.
HOW are the man, dog and book identified as arguments rather than predicates? 
(Lord, your terminology is getting even me talking nonsense).