From jcowan@reutershealth.com Wed Jul 18 14:25:28 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: jcowan@reutershealth.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_2_0); 18 Jul 2001 21:25:28 -0000 Received: (qmail 42948 invoked from network); 18 Jul 2001 21:21:02 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by l7.egroups.com with QMQP; 18 Jul 2001 21:21:02 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mail.reutershealth.com) (204.243.9.36) by mta3 with SMTP; 18 Jul 2001 21:20:57 -0000 Received: from reutershealth.com (IDENT:cowan@[192.168.3.11]) by mail.reutershealth.com (Pro-8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA24978; Wed, 18 Jul 2001 17:24:47 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <3B55FD9B.1020108@reutershealth.com> Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 17:20:27 -0400 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux 2.4.2-2 i686; en-US; rv:0.9.1) Gecko/20010607 X-Accept-Language: en-us MIME-Version: 1.0 To: And Rosta Cc: "Lojban@Yahoogroups. Com" Subject: Re: [lojban] goi References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: John Cowan And Rosta wrote: > 1. The Refgram, pp150-151 exx 5.2-3 explicitly says that > "la alis goi ko'a" and "ko'a goi la alis", both in sentences > where the referent of "la alis" has already been established, > are equivalent. I think this is mistake. The function of > {goi} should be to assign the referent of one (referential) > sumti (which should be the first one) to another sumti (which > should be the second one). Rather, goi asserts that its two sides have the same referent, (a la Prolog unification): o If just one is undefined, it is bound to be the same as the other. o If both are defined contradictorily, then it is nonsense. o If both are already defined to be the same thing, then it is nugatory. o If neither is defined, then if either should become defined in future, the other is also defined. > while the textbook's "ko'a goi la alis" ought to be "ko'a > no'u la alis". By "ought to be" do you mean "ought to be expressed as" or "ought to mean the same as"? > 2. Jorge tells me that (or so I understood), {da goi la ab > da goi la ac} is equivalent to {da xi pa goi la ab da xi > re goi la ac}, i.e. because it assigns its value to the > goi sumti, it is bound by a different quantifier (that is, > it is a different variable). This seems reasonable enough, > but I'd like to confirm that I understood correctly. That doesn't sound right to me. I think that da, la .ab., and la .ac. all end up referencing the same thing, which is not further qualified. (I assume that la .ab. and la .ac. have not been heard of before.) -- There is / one art || John Cowan no more / no less || http://www.reutershealth.com to do / all things || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan with art- / lessness \\ -- Piet Hein