Subject: Re: [lojban] ka versus du'u

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 09:32:22 EDT

In a message dated 9/19/2002 5:52:43 AM Central Daylight Time, [email-masked] 
writes:

<<
But I do not want to trigger again a discussion you had before: maybe> 
> you could just give me a reference in the list archive. Or maybe pc
> wrote a summary of this discussion issues, like some others I found 
> in the archives.
>>
pc wrote several tentative summaries of the discussion, all of which were 
rejected by a large part of the discussants -- including one which exactly 
met the conditions the discussants claimed to have agreed about. The result 
is that {du'u} and {ka} are used in at least three different ways each 
(though I think there were four parties in the discussion) and, if you don't 
know the party of your interlocutor, you can get a wrong reading 
occasionally. By and large, though, if you see a {ce'u} in either context, 
it is a property being talked about. If you see no {ce'u} in a {du'u} 
clause, it is likely not to be a property, with a small but significant 
margin of error. {ka} is always some property of something, but which 
property and of what is not always clear, since {ce'u}s appear and disappear 
in the same context with amazing dexterity. So, for use, whatever you do, 
put in all your {ce'u}s.

<<
A property abstraction is not the same as a predication abstraction.
(an indication of this seems to be that a useful x2 place has be given
to du'u and not to ka).
And on the other hand I see no reference in the book for the use of ce'u
with du'u.
CLL is very quiet about {ce'u}, talking about it only in terms of {ka}, but 
also talking about {ka} without {ce'u} or any place for it. The use with 
{du'u} -- and eventually with any abstraction --, while allowed for in CLL, 
was developed from the post-book discussion that took off from the 
understanding of {ce'u} as a lambda'd variable in the lambda calculus (the 
one about abstractions, not the one about probabilities). {ce'u} doesn't work 
well in that role if you have occasions to want to bind two places the same 
way -- and pretty scary if you want to do that twice: \x\yFxyyx, is just hard 
to say in Lojban, though it can be done.
That a property abstraction is not the same as a propositonal function is a 
contentious claim, though, amazingly, not one that was raised in the earlier 
discussion (I think). [I don't have reference numbers for the discussion but 
it seems to have stretch from August last year to April this, with a couple 
score of entries] The second place on {du'u} seems to have a certain use in 
mind, which is not this one, but is compatible with it (but almost never 
used, for obvious reasons).