Subject: RE: [lojban] RE:not only

From: "And Rosta" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 20:33:04 +0100

pycyn:
> Someplace back in the archives, whether for the net or various face-to-faces,
> is the history of {po'o} as a crutch. First semester logic students have
> bucked at "Only Ss are Ps" as "All Ps are Ss" since at least the third
> century bce (a textbook by Theophrastus assumes the student has this problem)
> and fans of "the logical language" have been no more tractable. So, to save
> them from having to think about what they were committed to (while still
> keeping that commitment tucked away in the deep semantics) we gave them
> {po'o} with the grammar of UI, so that they wouldn't even have toi struggle
> with the differences among the various places "only" (solus, monos,...)
> turned up, but could keep their SAE habits intact (aulun: what does Chinese
> do for these cases?).

That's very much how I remember the birth of po'o, too.

> This goes back to Loglan and attempts to correct it in
> the shift to Lojban failed (along with attempts to keep a few clever things
> from Loglan, alas). Pfui!

Which few clever things were lost?

--And.