Subject: Re: [lojban] tautologies

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 11:33:03 EST

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.
> 
> 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.
> 

On about fifth thought, {xukau} in a separate sentence seems to have to mean 
"some monadic truth function of {ta kargu} holds" which is a tautology, since 
the {kau} allow the negative forms, and the earlier {makau} is then 
equivalent to {da a no da} and so also a tautology. But now this does not 
say quite, "I will buy it whatever it costs / whetherever it is expensive;" 
it just says "I will buy it." ("and it either costs something / is expensive 
or not"). The first is pretty much guaranteed by {vecnu4}.
I do think you need some kind of causal -- "despite" would be nice, but I 
don't know if anything quite does that (though I recall going round on it 
once, or something close to it -- ahah! {ki'unai} looks about right). But 
that would only work if the price were extreme; if it were not, that would be 
a good reason to buy: {ki'u}, instead. Maybe this is {va'o} (I will spell it 
right eventually, I promise) again, though getting {kau} in a {nu} seems 
almost as suspect as having it run free. And does a tautological condition 
say anything at all? And, of course, is the resultant sentence true? Is 
there no condition involving price under which I would not buy it? Sounds 
like hyperbole to me -- but Lojban has to do hyperbole, too (but mark it?).