From pycyn@aol.com Sat Feb 09 13:06:14 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: Pycyn@aol.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_2); 9 Feb 2002 21:06:14 -0000 Received: (qmail 35156 invoked from network); 9 Feb 2002 21:06:13 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.172) by m3.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 9 Feb 2002 21:06:13 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO imo-r04.mx.aol.com) (152.163.225.100) by mta2.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 9 Feb 2002 21:06:13 -0000 Received: from Pycyn@aol.com by imo-r04.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v32.5.) id r.188.316d449 (3959) for ; Sat, 9 Feb 2002 16:06:11 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <188.316d449.2996e943@aol.com> Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2002 16:06:11 EST Subject: Re: [lojban] tautologies To: lojban@yahoogroups.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="part1_188.316d449.2996e943_boundary" X-Mailer: AOL 7.0 for Windows US sub 118 From: pycyn@aol.com X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=2455001 X-Yahoo-Profile: kaliputra --part1_188.316d449.2996e943_boundary Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 2/9/2002 11:09:53 AM Central Standard Time, jjllambias@hotmail.com writes: > I don't remember what you thought of: > > mi ta te vecnu ije makau ta jdima > I buy it, whatever be its price. > I hated it, for all the reasons that I dislike this one -- a free floating indirect question doesn't make any sense at all and doesn't have a truth value, so can't be atached truth functionally. No -- as I said then -- the second sentence is which is is true of P and ~P, neitehr of which is typically a tautology -- that is it is the answer to the question (if it has any truth value at all). A tautology is a single sentence which is true regardless. {ta se jdima makau} , if meaningful at all, is always true but is a different sentence on different occasions, so not a tautology. "It costs whatever it costs" is just {ta se jdima lo jdima be ta}, which is a tautology. I still suspect a large number of indirect questions, so called, are relatives or, as here, descriptions. As I said, indirect questions are questions in indirect discourse and make little sense elsewhere -- English to the contrary notwithstanding (in a word, this pursuit looks to be bloated malglicotude). --part1_188.316d449.2996e943_boundary Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 2/9/2002 11:09:53 AM Central Standard Time, jjllambias@hotmail.com writes:

I don't remember what you thought of:

mi ta te vecnu ije makau ta jdima
I buy it, whatever be its price.

I hated it, for all the reasons that I dislike this one -- a free floating indirect question doesn't make any sense at all and doesn't have a truth value, so can't be atached truth functionally.

<Which naturally leads to:

mi ta te vecnu ije xukau ta kargu
I buy it, whetherever it be expensive.

You might want to add some kind of causality connector instead
of a simple {ije}, but the second sentence is still a tautology.>

No -- as I said then -- the second sentence is which is is true of P and ~P, neitehr of which is typically a tautology -- that is it is the answer to the question (if it has any truth value at all).

<In English you can say tautological things like "it costs whatever
it costs", which one could lojbanize as "ta se jdima makau", but
it is hard to find a tautology operator to do a complete
proposition>

A tautology is a single sentence which is true regardless. {ta se jdima makau} , if meaningful at all, is always true but is a different sentence on different occasions, so not a tautology. "It costs whatever it costs" is just {ta se jdima lo jdima be ta}, which is a tautology. I still suspect a large number of indirect questions, so called, are relatives or, as here, descriptions. As I said, indirect questions are questions in indirect discourse and make little sense elsewhere -- English to the contrary notwithstanding (in a word, this pursuit looks to be bloated malglicotude).

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