Subject: Re: [lojban] tautologies

From: And Rosta <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 15:44:20 +0000

My 2c on this, fwiw:

1. I agree with pc that Jorge's main bridi q-kau are not a simple
extrapolation of subordinate bridi qkau. Logically, makau is equivalent
to ce'u, and other qkau are equivalent to as-yet-uncreated cousins of
ce'u. If Jorge can convince me that main clause makau can be replaced
by ce'u with the meaning preserved, then I may recognize some logical
basis for his usage.
2. That said, kosher qkau in subordinate bridi are already somewhat 
idiomatic, in that (say) "ma" is, logically, complexly derived from 
"ma kau", contrary to surface appearances (which give the
impression that "ma kau" is, logically, simplexly derived from "ma").
Given that qkau is therefore already somewhat idiomatic and subject
to convoluted logical interpretation (in its relationship to bare q words),
I don't see any overwhelming logical objection to using qkau in
main clauses as per Jorge's usage -- Jorge's usage is semantically
messy but useful, and is in a domain that is already semantically 
messier than one would have liked.
3. However, logically speaking Jorge's main clause qkau could occur
in a subordinate bridi (e.g. "[Whetherever]1 John knows _1 Jane
went" = "Whether John knows Jane went, or John knows Jane did
not go"), but this would not work grammatically. For this reason -- the
fact that main clause qkau cannot be used in the full range of
environments that either logic or the general patterns of lojban grammar
would lead us to expect it to have -- I am opposed to Jorge's usage.

--And

>>> <[email-masked]> 02/09/02 09:06pm >>>
In a message dated 2/9/2002 11:09:53 AM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] 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).