Subject: Re: [lojban] RE:not only

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 23:43:11 EDT

In a message dated 4/17/2001 8:50:52 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> la pycyn cusku di'e
> 
> >ro lo nelci be leva stizu cu du le mlatu
> 
> Why the change in word order? Isn't that the same as
> {le mlatu cu du ro lo nelci be le va stizu}?
> 

Force of habit: first semester logic dislike quantifiers in predicate 
position.

<Avoiding {du} is always good Lojban practice, though.>
Why would"the logical language" want to do away with a central part of the 
language of logic? Neither {mintu} nor {me} are as well defined.

<>{me le mlatu} gets a bit fuzzy, though both might be true if there were
>several cats and they all liked the chair,

No! If there were more than one cat, at least {du} would not
be true! Each of the cats would not be = each of the likers.
Each cat would only equal one of the likers.>

Sorry, I forgot that one of the changes that shouldn't have happened was the 
rule about implicit quantifiers: we got it backwards from the standard.

<>So
>noda poi na du le mlatu cu nelci leva stizu.

Or more succintly: no nardu'o be le mlatu cu nelci le va stizu

But that doesn't say that the cat does like it, which was part
of the original claim.>
Actually the first is the same length and clearer. And, of course (here we 
go on this one again) "only Ss are Ps" does not imply that even a single S is 
P, only that nothing else is. If {po'o} adds the exisatential condition, it 
is triply misleading instead of only doubly.

<I never really bought that UIs don't affect truth values. At least
some of them certainly do. In any case, all your objections to
{po'o} would also apply to {ji'a}.>

The ones that do, if there are any, are the same bastard creations as {po'o}. 
{ji'a}, however, does not change truth values, so is not a case in point.

<.  Not the Lojban plan, 
>as
>originally written nor even as revised in the Book.

I can't say I know what those plans are. {po'o} is not
one of the many cmavo that I would banish from the language... :)>

Some place in the Book (well-buried so far as my quick search just now goes) 
is the line -- going back to the first, 1959, edition of Loglan 1 -- about 
making inferences as transparent as possible, bringing out the logical 
structure of the statement, and so on. {po'o} doesn't do that but rather 
misleads and muddles. Too bad it is not on your list; the ones that are 
rarely have those peculiar properties, however useless they may be.

cowan:
<> But of course, the first case being non-unique is not just a discourse 
> function but a logical and factual one and so belongs in the the 
> truth-functional realms

It *can* belong there.  But in this construction I judge we are dealing
with a rhetorical emphasis, quite unlike "Not only farmers are fishers." = 
"Some non-farmers are fishers", where its function is clearly logical.>
Everyone else seems to be taking it as a factual, not merely a rhetorical 
claim; what is your basis for the different view -- other than the use of 
{po'o} in the translations?
Not that I am clear on what the "rhetorical use" of "only" is -- beyond 
restricting the universe of discourse.