Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: [lojban-beginners] Non-logical AND in Tanru?

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 20:42:19 -0700

On Wed, 13 Feb 2002 17:28:20 EST, [email-masked] wrote:

>I think this is occasionally a necessary distinction to make and we should 
>have some terminology for doing so (I'm less sure it is really a problem 
>here).

Well, this all started when I was looking at the PLGS example and the
YACC parsing of that when lightning struck and I started trying to
divorce the concepts involved from the language used to express them. :)
Every l-selbri (to use the terminology below) has its set of l-sumti
that it relates, whether or not there are any s-sumti referring to those
l-sumti. Maybe it would be good to also use "" to enclose s-sumti and
{} to represent l-sumti.

>The dictionary seems to favor the text version: it is explicitly a 
>text that is the predicate relation {bridi}, though {selbri} might be taken 
>to be the relation itself rather than the predicate that expresses it.  

It looks like the proper way to refer to that which is expressed by a
{le bridi} is with {le du'u}. That gets you the concept behind the
manner of expression, but still leaves us with saying "ledu'u" or
"abstract bridi" in English, or possibly with "predication" if we
understand that's not the text.

It still seems funny that there's not a gismu for {ledu'u}, but maybe it
makes a strange amount of sense that a natural Lojban speaker wouldn't
need a gismu for the concept. :) Ah, {dumbridi}?  

dumbridi du'u+bridi: abstract bridi: x1 = du'u1 (predication), x2 =
bridi1/du'u2 (text), x3 = bridi2 (relation), x4 = bridi3 (arguments).

That lets you talk about {ledu'u} without needing the NU...KEI sentence.

>For now, let's use l-sumti (from {la'e}) 
>for the things and s-sumti ({sa'e}) for the words. So, {mi e do} is one 
>s-sumti but stands for two l-sumti -- or more. (Question: does {mi'o} stand 
>for one l-sumti or two -- or more?)

"mi'o" refers to a single mass. ;) Or once we include the implicit
quantifiers, all of a single mass.

>But, but! I was with you til this. Then you turn around and go against your 
>own principle.

Ah, I meant to be doing that. ;) If we can't refer in English to the
l-sumti by quoting the s-sumti, then how else are we to do it? And if
quoting the s-sumti means we're referring to the l-sumti, how do we
refer to the s-sumti? If I quote "mi" do I mean the word "mi" or the
thing referred to by "mi" in the text? And how do I do either without
quoting? I was attempting to show the intractability of the situation
without a way to distinguish between "mi" and {mi}. I guess in a way I
succeeded. :)

-- 
EWC