Subject: Re: [lojban] tautologies

From: Lee Daniel Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2002 10:37:02 -0800 (PST)

> > > How do you say in Lojban "I buy it whatever it costs"?
> > How about:
> > {vecnu ta mi seja'i da .oicu'i jdima}
> 
> . If I had said {mi te vecnu ta ki'u...} instead of
> > {vecnu ta mi ki'u...}, would that have implied that I was
> > talking about the buyer's motivation?
> 
> Well, more clearly so -- but I am not sure that the other wouldn't have 
> worked as well, given that the seller is not mentioned. In any case, {ja'i} 
> looks like a non-starter for this purpose, since no purose nor rule seems to 
> be involved. Further, {oicu'i} suggests indifference to whether there is a 
> price or not, not to what the price is.

Ah, but there is a rule/requirement: the expression "I buy it no matter
the cost" implies a "usual" rule that we buy things when the price is
good, and that this particular purchase is an exception to that normal
rule. I'm mentioning the rule explicitly rather than by implication.

I might agree about {da.oicu'i} though; I'm still not sure. {da} is
just a bound variable. It is usually translated as "there exists",
but that doesn't mean it actually expresses existence as such. But
I think you're right that there should be a better way to express
indifference about the amount itself, although I can't think of it
offhand ({ni jdima .oicu'i} doesn't seem quite right either).

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <[email-masked]> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC