Subject: Re: [lojban] tautologies

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 21:02:41 EST

In a message dated 2/13/2002 8:10:35 AM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> 1. "du'u ma kau broda" = "is a completion of the incomplete propostion
> 'ma broda' = 'x broda', where x is unbound".
> The incomplete proposition is 'ma broda'. 'kau' signals a completion. 
> (Which completion depends on context. {djuno} requires a true completion, 
> other predicates don't.) Similarly 'pau' signals
> the request for a completion.

In what sense is {ma broda} incomplete? It is, in fact, more complete than 
even the extension of {broda}, which contains only the truths, while {ma 
broda} contains all the possible -- or reasonable -- falsehoods as well, It 
is super saturated. Of course, it isn't a proposition either, even an 
incomplete one. {kau} and {pau}, if they have parallel functions at all 
(and I can't think of any reason for saying they do other than that both 
occur in things that get called questions -- and {pau} doesn't all that often 
given our habit of putting queston words early on), mark the difference 
between direct questions and "indirect questions." {kau} doesn't signal a 
completion any more than {pau} does (aren't they suposed to be parallel?); 
combined with {du'u} it forms a predicate true of members of the questions, 
answers to it, and with an appropriate gadri, we get a selection from that 
set, which is what I take it you mean by a "completion." But notice that it 
takes quite a bit after {kau} to get there, mainly converting a set reference 
or, rather, display, into something that can be a sentence reference. The 
set wiht {kau} is the same as the set without {kau}, so {kau} doesn't affect 
things in any way. It just removes an ambiguity, which, I see, you all have 
managed to reintroduce at another level, so that {kau} looks like the wrong 
process and subscripting the right one (with all the attendant problems of 
which way to build the subscripts).
So, siince the starting point of this whole argument is simply false, I don't 
see the need to go on. But, what the hey!

> 
> 2 So what might main clause "ma kau broda" mean? It is also a completion 
> of 
> 'ma broda'. Which completion? Typically a/the true one, in the context 
> where 
> the sentence would otherwise be used as a claim.

The main clause {ma kau broda} would be {ma broda}, {kau} being there to 
distinguish the subordinate form, so dropped for the non-subordinate. To be 
a completion (i.e., selection) it would need first the conversion into a 
predicate and then the selecting gadri, making it subordinate again. Second 
step fails.

> 
> 3. If so, that turns out to be a good way of rendering English
> conditional wh-ever constructions.
> 
But step 2. required that the main clause occur where it is asserted and 
conditiona wh-ever clauses are precisely not of that sort, being conditional 
and all. Further, there is already a couple of perfectly good and 
straightforward ways to do these that don't involve odd critters. Why make 
life miserable?