Subject: Re: Binary Language

From: "thinkit41" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Dec 2001 00:25:53 -0000

This is a good change--you are addressing my ideas instead of 
attacking me. I appreciate it.

--- In lojban@y..., Rob Speer <rob@t...> wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 24, 2001 at 06:10:15AM -0000, thinkit41 wrote:
> > Decary? 10 arguments? I'm pretty unconvinced after 2, although 
> > there may be a true ternary operator (none have given an 
example).
> 
> You have chosen to ignore the example. Certainly you can get out of
> anything if you invent the appropriate words, but as pycyn points 
out,
> all you're doing is avoiding the fact that 'give' has three places
> (giver, gift, reciever) by making one word for 'give' and another 
for
> 'recieve', which between them cover the three places.
> 
> You would also need separate idea words for "talk to" and "talk 
about",
> and "go to" and "go from", etc. How about concepts like "between" 
or
> "combine" where the x2 and x3 are interchangeable? Or would you 
simply
> leave those out of your language?

No, talk and go would both be one argument concepts. That's how 
they are in english--the "to" and "about" can both be represented by 
sentence tags (modals).

Between would end up as a one argument concept "is between". 
Combine would be two arguments, with the second one elaborated on in 
a further sentence.

> What you would end up doing, it seems, is creating a separate idea 
for
> each combination of x1 and some other place, which is just a really
> inefficient way of doing tags. Hence I maintain that if you're not 
going
> to bother to use complete place structures, you shouldn't use them 
at
> all.

Well, we're end up stuck on efficiency. I think it's just two 
different ways of doing things. As long as I can represent the 
meaning, I'll stick with the 2 argument paradigm.

> -- 
> la rab.spir
> noi se zdile