Subject: Re: [lojban] gerku zdani

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 19:15:19 EDT

In a message dated 4/18/2001 5:21:05 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> ko'a zdani be lo nargerku
> 
> or, if you wish,
> 
> ko'a zdani be lo na'e gerku
> 
> 
> 
> "x is a house for non-dogs".
> 
> xu ko'a gerku zdani
> 
> According to the definition of a tanru, there has to exist any relatio
> between ko'a, gerku and zdani. Well, here, it exists. This actually means
> that any <broda> is a <brode broda>, for any given broda and brode, since
> you can arbitrarily add 'na' as you wish to make any relation correct.
> 
> 
> I think tanru are defined incorrectly as 'having any relation', and should
> be defined as 'having an unspecified, implicit relation', parallel to
> zo'e.
> 
I just don't follow this at all. What definition of "tanru" requires 'any 
relation' between seltau and tertau? *Some* relation, maybe, but a fairly 
specific one -- though not obvious necessarily to the hearer (or, if truth be 
told, always to the speaker). As for {ko'a} the first place sumti in this 
case, its relation to the tanru is just that: the first terbri of the bridi 
of which the tanru is selbri. So its relation is always good old 
Application, the unmarked member of the Relation category. 
Now we have that ko'a is a house for something other than a dog and the 
question is, is it a dog house. The question is unanswerable with any degree 
of certainty on the information given. For one thing, we don't know what a 
gerku zdani is. But assuming that it is on the pattern of zdani lo na'e 
gerku, we'd need to know a bit more about the house. It is for a non-dog, 
but it might do very well for a dog as well. And, of course, if the tanru is 
built on some other model, the fact that the house is for a non-dog (in 
residence) may have nothing to do with the case at all (is it dog-shaped, for 
example, or made of dog hide). 
All of this being the case, I do not see how we jump from tanru being 
semantically ambiguous to all selbri being tanru, if I understand "every <
broda> is a <brode broda>" correctly, nor, rather more elaborately, that 
every selbri is a tanru with an arbitrary first member (and apparently an 
arbitrary second one, too) {Sidbo} is just {mlatu sidbo}? In what sense? 
They mean the same? Not on any reading I can make out. What then? And 
where then does the use of {na} come in -- to make yet a third tanru that 
somehow bridges the gap between the simple brivla and the first tanru? 
There may be something profound here (never mind my obvious doubts), but it 
sure is not clear what it is yet. The kindest it gets so far is that it is a 
hideously obscure way of saying that you can't be sure what a tanru is from 
what its components are, and that is something we knew all along -- and have 
said clearly countless times.