Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: [jboske] RE: Anything but tautologies

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 2002 09:22:00 EST

In a message dated 2/28/2002 8:03:13 PM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> > Then what the fatal fandango is the way to refer to the letter "a"? Or 
> the 
> > numeral "1", to get back to the point?
> 
> {me'o abu} and {me'o pa} respectively.
> 

But letters are not (or are only incidentally) mathematical expressions, why 
ship them off to that Siberia -- where few have dared to go? And those who 
have declare it a vast wasteland, without charm or useful resources.

<So, what is the numeral "1" OUTSIDE MEX?

I don't know. What is the name "John" outside cmene?>

Well, its not clear that "John" has any use outside of cmene, but "1" is used 
in all sorts of non-mathematical contexts -- how is it referred to then? How 
say that it is the character on the next to northwestmost key of the 
keyborad, say?

<> <It is not yet defined to mean anything in particular.>
> 
> Not even the "1" key on a keyboard? Like all those other guys that are 
> something with a {bu} tucked on the end? No system at all?

Lots of people seem to have the impression that "bu" means a more
abstract representation of a numeral or letteral. No.>

A what? A letter or a numeral is pretty abstact already, given the 
presistent token-type ambiguity. And what then could be more abstract than a 
letter-type and still be said to be a letter at all?

<"bu" takes any Lojban word, regardless of whether it is a lerfu, and
makes a lerfu out of it. There's a convention that if you take a lerfu
and add "bu", you get some lerfu that resembles the one you started with
- hence "vybu" is "w" - but this is not a rule.
And the result of "bu" is always another lerfu, and when used alone
lerfu are always pronouns (or variables).

So "pabu" might be a variable named "1", but it is not the number "1".>

I can see that the convention making {abu}, say, a variable could conflict 
its being the name of a letter, though we rarely talk about letters so the 
chances of conflict are small. And, on those occasions when the distinction 
needs to be made, some device (does {la abu} parse?) would have to be 
employed, contrary to intuition. But this kind of systemic ambiguity that is 
now said to be doctrine is pretty much at variance with the clear intention 
of otherparts of the language -- the shift keys, for example.

<<I won?t even ask how to define {n?} general in Lojban...>
"Prime" could be {na'u selyli'e}, but since this is quite verbose I
think there would be a case for an experimental cmavo.>

Well, that is for "successor", not "prime," and we could even then probably 
get along withou the {na'u} part.

Cowan:
<"N second", of course. "Prime" is not the name of the mark,
it just means "first" here.>

Oddly, it is the name of the mark: (Am Her) n6: "A mark (') written above and 
to the right of a letter in order to distinguish it from the same letter 
already in use or to designate a related quantity or thing, as feet, minutes 
of angle, or minutes of time"

<Things with "bu" are letters or symbols. You *could* use pabu for
the character "1" (as distinct from the numeral "1"); I merely said
that there is no authoritative rule to that effect.>

Just what is the character "1" if not the numeral "1"? Numerals are 
characters used to represent numbers. Or do we have to introduce yet another 
level of something (abstraction?) into our ontology?

<I don't think of n' as applying a function; it's just a name that
happens to be typographically a little odd. Using ny. .y'y.bu is
fine too.>

It is a function with an odd representation, perhaps. But won't {ny y'ybu} 
turn into some weird combination of a variable and character? I think there 
is a serious type confusion at the heart of this whole process and hope 
someone will sort it out soon, so I can have spelling bees.