Subject: Re: [lojban] po'u considered harmful

From: And Rosta <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 14:41:26 +0000

>>> Craig <[email-masked]> 01/14/02 02:18am >>>
#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.

I find accusations of malglico annoying. If something is to'e logji
then it is mabla to'e logji regardless of whether it is glico. If it
is ja'e logji but glico then it is not mabla.

#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, 

If so, they would be wrong. "du" means logical identity, which, when
its sumti are referring expressions, as in this case, means that the sumti
refer to the same individual.

#as one could easily say either
#'mi'e kreig.' or 'mi me la kreig.' 

The latter is equivalent pragmatically but not semantically. It means
"I have the property of Craighood".

#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. 

"poi me" doesn't mean "two and only two beings are identical".
It means that X has the property of being individual Y.

#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.

Your criticisms of du have no basis. Likewise, the prevalent idea that 
_du_ tends to be malglico has no basis.

When I saw the Subject Line "po'u considered harmful", I incorrectly
guessed that you were going to make the valid point that when
people say "mi po'u la bab" they usually mean "mi no'u la bab".
"Mi po'u la bab" selects from the group of speakers and refers to the
one that is la bab. Hence if Bab is speaking on behalf of a group
of speakers that includes Bab and Djan (e.g. reading a jointly written
paper at a conference) then Bab can quite licitly say "mi po'u la djan"
to refer to Djan. OTOH, if Bab says "mi no'u la Djan", Bab is claiming
that he is Djan. Ergo, usually when people say "mi po'u la bab"
they mean "mi no'u la bab".

--And.