Subject: Re: [lojban] RE:not only

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 04:40:47

la pycyn cusku di'e

><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.

I don't know, it is never needed in normal usage, and almost
every time when it is used, it is misused.

><>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.

You're right! The second just feels more succint because it has
less words and a less complex structure.

>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.

Of course, but "only the cat likes that chair" does imply
that the cat likes that chair. It is not just a case of
"only Ss are Ps".

You can't say for example: "Only the cat likes that chair,
not even the cat likes it." That's contradictory.

>If {po'o} adds the exisatential condition, it
>is triply misleading instead of only doubly.

If you remove the existential condition from "only the cat
likes that chair" you are not giving a faithful translation.

> {ji'a}, however, does not change truth values, so is not a case in point.

So you don't see a problem in something like:

pa da nenri le tanxe i le bolci ji'a cu go'i
"Exactly one thing is in the box, the ball too is in the box."

There is nothing strange about that sentence if we remove {ji'a},
but adding it makes it very weird. In that sense I think it affects
truth values. And {po'o} is much like it in my mind, the
"no additional" that it contains is just like the "in addition to"
that {ji'a} contains. They both affect the truth value in the same
sense, if they affect it at all.

co'o mi'e xorxes

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