Subject: Re: [lojban] tautologies

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2002 22:22:08 EST

In a message dated 2/10/2002 6:19:06 PM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> la pycyn cusku di'e
> 
> > 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.
> 
> I don't think English does it quite the same way, and Spanish even
> less so.
> 

Then just why do you want to use a freefloating indirect question here? The 
English parallel at least was some motivation; what is left now is just a 
meaningless grammatical form that is unrelated to what you want to say. 
Apparently.

<>The equivalence (in
>more interesting ways -- grammatical transformation to start with) between
>{ijenai} and {ije naku} are fundamental to the language.

Let's put {da'au} (the proposed tautology operator) in
selma'o NA. Why is {ijenai} interestingly equivalent to {ije naku}
but {iju} is not interestingly equivalent to {ije da'auku}? It
seems to me to be exactly parallel.>

The are now almost syntactically parallel, but the relation between {ju} and 
{je da'auku} is not encoded as is the relation between {jenai} and {je naku}. 
{ju} is not related to {je} in any regular way. Notice, you might just as 
well have related {ju} to {janai da'auku} or {da'auku naja} or {jo da'auku}. 
These all have the same truth values, but are otherwise only incidentally 
related to one another.

<><I case
>of {ta} but changes for {makau}.>
>
>Remember that {makau} is a cover for whatever happens to be true in the
>circumstances.

And {ta} is a cover for whatever you happen to be pointing at 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:

And if {ta} is {le ladru}, {ta se jdima makau} is {le ladru cu
se jdima makau}, and if it is {le nanba}, then it is {le nanba
cu se jdima makau}, and so on.>

It seems to me that there is a difference between changing the referent of a 
word and changing the whole proposition involved, even though changing a word 
does change the proposition involved. In one case, you have a differnt thing 
satisfying the sense of what is said, in the other you have a different sense 
altogether. It is when you say things like the above that I feel justified 
in thinking that you still are drawn to the notion that the answer to a 
question is just what fills the gap, rather than the whole sentence that 
answers it.
Put another way, {ta} is not {le ladru}, though it may happen to refer to le 
ladru, to a particular bit of milk. But {ta se jdima makau} really is {ta se 
jdima - 50 cents} or whatever the case may be -- even if you don't know what 
proposition you are committing to, but you do know it is true.

<Yes, the particularity of {kau} sentences is that they are always
true, but that they are a different thing on each occasion is not
particular to them.>

Well, I suppose all the {kau} behave this way, but other than those, what? 
The references of referring expressions change, but the propositions do not, 
in most ordinary cases. The proposition almost always changes with {kau}. 

<<I case
>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),

No, I think I mostly held that the {noda} answer was acceptable.
What we had a row about, if I recall correctly, was the {na'i}
answer.>

Correct, the talk about negations was about metalinguistic cases.

<<I case
>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.

Ok, that's not really the point here. Let's consider an example
where the {noda} answer is a real possibility. Forget about
prices and consider destinations, or gifts, or whatever.>

The same argument is going to work as well, though it will be harder to come 
up with an empty destination or an empty gift. But it will still be the case 
that I give what I give and go where I go, and I see no reason that that 
requires me to use an indirect question because of the English form (which 
is arguably not an indirect question even). Now, of course, this, combined 
with problems about the meaning of {lo} with an empty set may be the start of 
a reason, but it need work -- a check for alternative possibilities to begin 
with.