Subject: po'u considered harmful

From: "Craig" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2002 21:18:36 -0500

coi rodo

I see two difficulties in proper use of po'u and no'u.

The first is that it can, depending on context, be malglico.

The phrase 'mi po'u la kreig.' expands to 'mi poi du la kreig.', which
further becomes 'mi poi ke'a du la kreig.', which in turn asserts that 'ke'a
du la kreig.', and since ke'a = mi here, it asserts that 'mi du la kreig.'.
It is, however, not expressing equality in a mathematical sense, as two
people (mi and la kreig.) might be the same person, as they are here, but
they have no numerical values and thus are not equal to one another. In
fact, such a use of du as 'mi du la kreig' would surely be taken as being
malglico by most lojban-speaking listeners, as one could easily say either
'mi'e kreig.' or 'mi me la kreig.' The former has no relevance to a
discussion of po'u, obviously, but notice that 'poime' and 'po'u' have very
similar grammars and the same number of syllables.

Suppose for a moment that we had two cmavo, 'poi'e' and 'noi'e', which were
equivalent to 'poi me' and 'noi me', respectively. I am not encouraging the
use of such cmavo, but they are useful to discuss here. Any usage of po'u
which assert that two and only two beings were the same would be identical
to such a usage of poi'e. The same goes for no'u and noi'e. However, they
would be less malglico. That is, 'mi poi du la kreig.' would say the same as
'mi poi me la kreig.' but because it does not use du for a purpose other
than its intended one, it would not be malglico in the least.

I will not assert that all nonmathematical uses of du are malglico, but I du
feel that a great many of them are, YPI. Since every use of po'u means a use
of du, than in any case where a full 'poi ke'a du' would be attacked as
malglico, 'po'u' should be also. If there were a cmavo 'poi'e', it would
never have this problem.

There is a grammatical difference between poi'e and po'u: 'mi poime la
kreig. le zarci cu klama' would mean something like 'I, being like Craig as
regards the market, go', whereas 'mi po'u la kreig. le velju'o cu klama'
would be commonly interpreted as 'I, Craig, go to the store.'

However, the second of these examples runs into the second problem with
po'u: ignorance of the place structure of du. Since po'u implies a stealth
du, 'mi po'u la kreig le zarci cu klama' in fact means 'mi poi ke'a du la
kreig le zarci cu klama' - and thus asserts that 'mi du la kreig le zarci',
for du is multi-placed and asserts all places to be equal. mi na zarci, so
when using po'u, ku or ku'o is more necessary than commonly interpreted; I
am probably guilty of calling myself things that I am not for this reason.

This type of usually unintentional multiplaced du-usage is the only context
in which po'u and poime would have different meanings.

For these reasons, I will now begin to use 'poime' instead of 'po'u'
whenever I remember, and encourage others to do the same.

--la kreig.daniyl.

'segu le balvi temci gi mi'o renvi lo purci
.i ga le fonxa cu janbe gi du mi'
-la djimis.BYFet

xy.sy. gubmau ckiku nacycme: 0x5C3A1E74