Subject: Re: [lojban] tautologies

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2002 18:33:01 EST

In a message dated 2/10/2002 10:13:35 AM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> 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.
> 
> Ok. I on the other hand prefer to find meaning in any grammatical
> sentence whenever I can.
> 

Even if it is semantically ill-formed, like "Colorless green ideas sleep 
furiously"? I am not sure that this case is as bad as that; it may even have 
a usage. But I don't yet see a reason for giving it to this usage, other 
than "that is how English (and Spanish?) does it." Please make your case.

<><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.

Hmmm... So you can't combine a unary operator with a binary
operator to get another binary operator. Would you say that
binary-unary combination {ije naku} is also not equivalent in
any interesting way to the binary {ijenai}? (They are truth
functionally the same.)>

Sorry, I made no such generalized claim; I just said that this particular 
claim got no farther than truth-functional identity. The equivalence (in 
more interesting ways -- grammatical transformation to start with) between 
{ijenai} and {ije naku} are fundamental to the language.

<><{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.

I don't understand. What gets pronounced is the same in different
occasions, so you don't mean that. The situation described is
different for both in different occasions, so you don't mean that
either. I don't see what it is that remains the same for the case
of {ta} but changes for {makau}.>

Remember that {makau} is a cover for whatever happens to be true in the 
circumstances. So, if ta costs fifty cents, {ta se jdima makau} is {ta se 
jdima -50cents} and if it is a dollar, then it is {- 1 dollar} and so on: 
You may say the same thing, but the sentence you utter changes with the 
circumstance for all that, so that it is always the true one. You have, in 
effect said "I declare the true sentence of the base form {ta se jdima ---}." 
What you say is always true, but it is a different thing on each occasion. 
If {makau} accepts the {no da} answer (and it loks as theough you held the 
opposite view on this earlier -- not that I think that would commit you now), 
the clearly {ta se jdima no da} is ok, and so {no da} is an acceptable 
replacement, if need -- but note it is never needed, for {lo jdima be ta}, 
and thus for {da}, if you think that that goes through. This is a feasible 
position, but just barely. I prefer saying that some things have a 0 price 
and some things an infinite one, both of which cannot be paid.