Subject: nelci

From: sbelknap <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 7 Dec 2002 19:56:35 -0600

I just had an interesting conversation with my son, who is five. We were 
talking about <nelci>. Quite often, when I ask him if he likes X, he says no, 
even though he has never tasted X. I then complain that he has never tasted X, 
so how can he say he doesn't like it? As we discussed <nelci>, I finally saw 
the logic of his point-of-view, which as any Loglander or lojbanistani knows 
has to do with the fussiness of negation. My son only likes things he has 
tasted and "doesn't like" anything he hasn't tasted. I either like or don't 
like things I've tasted, and don't know about things I haven't tasted.

When we discussed what <nelci> means, we both realized that we had been 
miscommunicating in English. He is using a different negation scheme than I 
am. I tried to explain lojban negation to him, but I soon realized that I do 
not have a firm grasp on this myself, so I'm going to have to reread what John
had to say about negation. As I recall, the grammar is quite lucid on this 
topic.

My two year old daughter says "no" a lot. Now, I wonder what exactly she 
means!

-co'o mi'e la stivn