Subject: Re: [lojban] tautologies

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2002 09:15:28 EST

In a message dated 2/9/2002 4:04:37 PM Central Standard Time, jjllambias@ho
tmail.com writes:

> But you're approaching this backwards. You say: "{makau broda}
> is an indirect question and therefore it only makes sense in
> subordinate clauses. I refuse therefore to consider what it might
> mean as a free floating clause." I want to say: "We more or less
> understand what {makau broda} means as a subordinate clause, but
> in Lojban it is also grammatical as a free floating clause. Is
> there a possible generlization of the meaning so as to cover this
> case, or are we forced to declare it nonsense?"
> 

Well, as a fundamentalist in Lojban, I point out thaat, although {kau} is 
grammatical outside of subordinate clauses, it is meaningless since it is the 
mark of an indirect question and that is its only function. Alos, of course, 
we do not know enough about how indirect questions work (there are at least 
three theories on that, none of them definitive nor more than plausibly 
false) to suggest a reasonable generalization to illicit cases. And also 
there is the question of whether following English habits here will give the 
clearest and most useful solution to presently perceived problems or whether 
another approach is better. None of this says that what you are doing is 
wrong, necessarily, but it is clearly unjustified at the moment.

<How do you say in Lojban "I buy it whatever it costs"?>

I take it this is the problem. It seems to mean that cost is not a factor 
and so some expression along that line, probably a clause involving {lo jdima 
na srana}.

<Of course neither P nor ~P are tautologies. The function of a
tautology operator is to make a tautology out of a non-tautology.
Suppose we had a tautology operator in lojban ({da'au} was
once proposed). Would you agree that {mi ta te vecnu ije da'au
ta kargu} is equivalent to {mi ta te vecnu iju ta kargu}?>

No. One conjoins the significant sentence with a truth, the other simply 
ignores the second sentence, which might be false. They would be truth 
functionally the same, but not equivalent in any interesting way. 

<{ta se jdima lo jdima be ta} is as much a different sentence on
different occasions as {ta se jdima makau}.>

Not so. {ta se jdima lo jdima be ta} is always the same sentence, even 
though what the price is changes with circumstances. But {ta se jdima makau} 
is, generalizing from most of the theories about indirect questions, whatever 
of the set of answers to the question happpens to be true: so, as the price 
changes, so does the sentence -- not just the referent, but the expression 
itself.

<And I don't agree that {ta se jdima lo jdima be ta} means "it costs
whatever it costs". I think it is equivalent to {ta se jdima da},
"it costs something", which may be false.>

Well, it implies {ta se jdima da} of course, but that is not false ({lo jdima 
be ta cu rupnu li no pi no no sei cumki}) . And I suppose a case could be 
made that {ta se jdima da} implies it. That of course comes from the fact 
that if it is true that {ta se jdima} then there has to be a price, even if 
it is 0 (that is a tautology too). The only way it can be false is of 
something which has no price, but then "It costs whatever it costs" would be 
false as well, since these things have no cost at all. There are, of course, 
no such things (and I think that is a necessary truth too).