Subject: Re: [lojban] RE:not only

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2001 19:22:31 EDT

In a message dated 4/20/2001 9:41:38 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

cowan:
> <Quine, whose book >Quiddities< explains a clear
> >and general method for restating "only" in the language of predicate logic
> >(which is of course what Lojban is about):> Identity...>
> > > A vital use of identity lurks unobserved in much of our use
> > > of 'only' and 'else' and 'nothing but'. When I say that the hiding
> > > place is known to Ralph and only him, nobody else, I mean to
> > > say two things: that Ralph knows the hiding place and that
> > > whoever knows the hiding place is identical with Ralph. To
> > > say that there is no God but Allah is to affirm, of whatever
> > > Gods there be, that Each, or He, is identical with Allah.
> >These two examples go directly into Lojban thus:
> > ro da poi djuno fi le velmipri stuzi du la ralf.
> > all x1s which know-about the secret-method place are-identical-to 
> > Ralph
> > ro da poi cevni du la .alax.
> > all x1s which are-gods are-identical-to Allah
> >Here are more examples showing the flexibility of this "da poi... du" 
> >construct:
> > la djordj. du ro da poi darxi le tamni fo le nazbi
> > George is-identical-to all those who hit the cousin on the nose.
> > Only George hit his cousin on his nose.
> >(Note that English is over-specific by Lojban standards in saying "his 
> >cousin".
> >and "his nose". Likewise, English idiomatically says "He put his hands in 
> his
> >pockets": to speakers of other languages, the question naturally arises
> >"Whose pockets would he put his hands in?", and even more peculiar, "Whose
> >hands would he put in his pockets?".)
> > ro da poi la djordj. darxi ke'a fo le nazbi du le tamne
> > All those whom George hit on the nose are-identical-with the 
> cousin.
> > George hit only his cousin on his nose.
> > ro da poi la djordj. darxi le tamne fo ke'a du le nazbi
> > All that which George hit his cousin on are-identical-with the 
> nose
> > George hit his cousin only on his nose.
> > George hit his cousin on his nose only.>
I am not generally a fan of Quine's (wrote a paper that showed a certain 
theory as the way to go and ever after claimed the paper refuted the theory), 
but this is nice and clear. Note, please, that he needs "Ralph and only 
Ralph" to get in that Ralph knows -- "only Ralph" does not doe it by itself.

jimc, citing colin fine
<The word "only" was one of the first that I broke my
>teeth on.  Here is a short list of meanings, supplementing what Colinwrote:
>(1)     The only way is love            There is exactlyone X which is
>                                         a tadji (way), AND X is love
>(2)     I ate only two cookies          I ate two cookies,AND two is less
>                                         than the expected number for this
>                                         situation
>(3)     I only ate two cookies          I ate two cookies,AND that event
>                                         is less than what would normally
>                                         justify the criticism or punishment
>                                         that you are putting me through
>(4)     She is only a servant           She is a servant, AND this condition
>                                         implies a social status that is less
>                                         than what is normally expected for
>                                         the present situation
>(5)     Smoke if you want, only not     Smoke if you want [discursive of
>         where I can smell it.           contrast] don't smoke where...
>Thus, as Colin points out, the keyword "only" is very ambiguous and should
>be avoided, and the English word is Protean (not Procrustean).
>Syntactically in these examples, "only" is a 1-word abbreviation for a
>deep structure consisting of a rather complicated supplementary
>subordinate clause.>
On 1, I would say there is at most one way "All ways are love"
On 2, we did something a while back {nore} as I recall
On 4, ga'i the converse, snob to the toady discussed earlier for honorifics
On 5 ije ku'i
1 is where we still fight, 3 needs a solution alike in spirit, though 
obviously not in form to 2.  
The final conclusion here seems wrong:"only" is not a unitary phenomenon but 
the surface of a variety of deeps structure which happen to have fallen 
together phonetically (even morphologically, perhaps).

<kau, li'o, sa'a and possibly mi'i and pe'a all are UI discursives that 
change the logical content in significant ways.  kau seems most clearly 
similar to po'o in that it hides a long-winded logical expansion that few 
people know how to express.>
{mi'i} isn't UI and the others, with the possible exception of {kau} don't 
effect content in a logical way (deletion and insertion, for example, are 
hardly logical operations, and {pe'a} modifies the meaning, not the structure 
of the sentence. It is encouraging to think that SOMEONE knows (or has even 
a clue) of how {kau} works. Names?