From richardt@flash.net Mon Jun 11 18:33:13 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: richardt@flash.net X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_1_3); 12 Jun 2001 01:33:12 -0000 Received: (qmail 68391 invoked from network); 12 Jun 2001 01:33:12 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m8.onelist.org with QMQP; 12 Jun 2001 01:33:12 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO pimout4-int.prodigy.net) (207.115.63.103) by mta1 with SMTP; 12 Jun 2001 01:33:12 -0000 Received: from flash.net ([216.51.101.139]) by pimout4-int.prodigy.net (8.11.0/8.11.0) with ESMTP id f5C1X9m30966; Mon, 11 Jun 2001 21:33:09 -0400 Sender: richardt@pimout4-int.prodigy.net Message-ID: <3B2560B0.1BE11538@flash.net> Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 19:22:08 -0500 X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.16-22smp i686) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: pycyn@aol.com Cc: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] RE: zi'o and modals References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Richard Todd pycyn@aol.com wrote: > > {zi'o} first came to marked attention on this list when somneone > notice that > the definition of {botpi} "bottle" involved a content and a cap, which > a > bottle by the side of the road typically lacked. So what was that > bottle? Ok, (please don't give up on me. I really am trying to get a grip on this. To me, though, what you guys are saying is not very logical. Maybe I'm trying to make these devices--recently with the attitudinals also--more orthogonal than they really are? At any rate this will be the last time I beat this horse, I promise) mi viska le botpi be fo noda (I see a bottle with unspecified contents, material, and no cap) Now, this bottle on the road, if we were to investigate it, does actually have contents (some air, dirt, a bug, and a little water). They are not important enough to mention, though. This is a case for {zo'e}, isn't it?? {zo'e} has a value in this case that can make the sentence true. I chose to say outright there is no cap, but you could put that in {zo'e}'s corner as well depending on how important it is to this sentence. Why on earth is a {zi'o} version different or better? Apparently, a bottle filled with soda and topped with a shiny propeller cap can be reduced to the {zi'o} version without becoming false. That makes it no better than {zo'e} for expressing the unimportant parts of this bottle relationship. I think I finally understand that {zi'o} means: ``this place could or could not have a truthful value, but I'm not going to make an assertion about that either way'' (thus the one-way implication from {zo'e} to {zi'o} but not the other way around). Why let {zi'o} and {zo'e} overlap this way? If {zo'e} claims there is a truthful value, {zi'o} should be saying that there is no truthful value. That is a clear distinction, without ambiguity. Then the challenge is coming up for useful way to use {zi'o}, since the sentences come out kind of zen-like: mi viska le botpi be zi'o bei le blaci bei zi'o (I see a glass bottle which cannot contain anything--including nothing!--and which is inherently capless) { maybe it's solid glass that's bottle-shaped? }. Richard