Subject: RE: Grammar Clarifications

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 04:33:30 EDT

With apologies to Nick, who only wanted snap judgements, not thirty-day 
debates.
lojbab:
[on {de'i}]<>
Thanks; that seems to best solution all around. And so, in the case of 
letters, we usually go for the date written (the ambiguity here remains).

[on {me}]<>The alternative I suppose is {ta me la ford karce} instead
>of {ta me la ford}. Or maybe also {ta karcrforde}.

ta srana/steci la ford
also works.  A question is whether one really needs a predicate that 
totally within itself with no other sumti means "is a FordIt refers to a date 
associated with the letter.  What exactly the date has 
to do with the letter is ellipsized, associated with another place of detri 
and/or a sumti-raising therefrom.As to why the reasons for the change - I was 
of the opinion that pc at the 
time accepted the change, which was based on an argument from formal logic 
by Randall Holmes, then serving as pc's "replacement" as TLI's resident 
logician.>
Well, "accept" isn't "agrees with" or even "understands." Does anyone 
remember what RH's reasoning was? The main point, as I recall, for starting 
the discussion back then was that JCB's original notion had gotten (quel 
surprise!) pretty amorphous as he fit more and more things into his original 
good idea. But the original idea was not so bad and I see that there is not 
a replacement for it yet (xorxes' makes no coherent sense and lojbab's is not 
a replacement).

xorxes:
<Probably the main one to avoid is {du lo broda}, which is
logically sound but means about the same as plain {broda}.>

Actually, as one or the other Sir Wm. Hamilton showed, it means exactly the 
same (with suitable modifications for langauge). It is bad style, but 
pretty good logic (no too bad even logic, cf. Lesniewski). That aside 
(incompetence, surely -- why will people take up a logical language and not 
learn logic?), just why has identity, of all the logical primitives, fallen 
into disfavor? (I suppose that it is, as in the case of {ganai}, some 
massive confusion of the sort dealt with in week 1 and again just after 
midterm.)

<It should be noted that they are different though in one important
respect: {me ko'a} means "x1 is at least one of ko'a", whereas
{du ko'a} means "x1 is equal to (each) ko'a". When ko'a is a
singleton they are about the same, when it isn't, they aren't.>

Is this certified? It seems that there are a variety of interpretations 
available, depending on what {ko'a} goes back to. And taken literally, the 
intended interpretation here would force {ko'a} to refer to a single object 
each time

<IRight. {me} is the only way to incorporate the definiteness of {le}
into the selbri.>
mi du le morsi mlatu (but that was already mentioned) -- and, as only a 
referent of the phrase, {me} is inspecific (or indefinite or whatever).  

<>Perhaps a better example would be the Walt Kelly quote, "We have met the 
>enemy,
>and he is us." Is there any better way to translate that than {mi'o puzi 
>penmi
>le bradi .ije ri du mi'o}?

That's strictly equivalent to: {mi'o le bradi puzi penmi gi'e du}>

Logically correct and yet totally wrong (not all that rare a situation, alas).