Subject: Re: [lojban] Predicate logic and childhood.

From: Jay Kominek <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 17:42:42 -0600 (MDT)

On Wed, 2 May 2001, Rob Speer wrote:

> I suggested {ko (do bazi) nicygau ledo kumfa .ijo mi curmi lenu do klama le
> panka}.
>
> xorxes thinks that this sentence means something different than "If you
> clean your room, I'll let you go to the park" and should not be used to
> translate it, instead suggesting either using the x3 of curmi (spawning a
> side-debate about what the x3 of curmi really means) or some sort of
> "conditional" which expresses it in terms of cause and effect. (I have no idea
> how this would be formed in Lojban, and I don't believe an example has been
> provided, though it might be 'rinka' with a 'nu' on both sides.)

le nu do nicygau le do kumfa cu rinka le nu mi curmi le nu do klama le
panka

I think a modal like va'o is appropriate:

mi ba curmi le nu do klama le panka kei va'o le nu do mu'o nicygau le do
kumfa

Or maybe replace the va'o... with "va'o le za'i nicygau le do kumfa"

(Maybe the parent doesn't care who or how the room becomes clean. It
simply has to be clean before they will allow their child to go.)

As a further bit of nit picking, "ko" seems completely in appropriate to
me, especially if you want an accurate translation. The parent is simply
telling the child what will happen, not commanding it to happen. (Though I
must admit, when I pointed this out to my parents when I was a child, they
didn't buy into it.)

I'm of the opinion that logic simply doesn't come into this at all. Its
not a logical sort of statement, its purely conditional.

- Jay Kominek <[email-masked]>
Waiting Is.