Subject: Re: [lojban] goi

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 17:20:27 -0400

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.)

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