Subject: Re: [lojban] Tidying notes on {goi}

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 21:08:14 EDT

In a message dated 7/27/2001 5:37:18 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> ><
> >In {da goi la alfas} la alfas cannot have a previous referent.
> >If it does, then it is gobbledygook.>
> >
> >Under which set of rules? Why can this not (under the present rules) not
> >just be the namely rider on {da}, "there is an x, namely Alpha?"
> 
> That's {no'u}. {goi} might end up meaning that when there is nothing
> to assign, but strictly it does not.
> 
> 
> ><
> >That's what I thought. You will have to correct you demonstration
> >then, as you leave xy dangling unassigned in the middle of it:>
> >
> >Ummm!  I thought that was your example; it isn't mine (who else was inthis
> >discussion?)
> 
> You used it in actual usage, not as an example now but some 800
> messages back, in the demonstration that no number is the highest
> number. That's what I remembered when And asked for a way to use
> names as bound variables. I found your {da goi xy} back then very
> elegant and useful, but you can't do a general da'o so as to recycle
> da, and then keep using xy with its original binding.
> 

ahso:
noda zo'u ge da numcu gi node  numcu gi'e balzma da da'o.i .i ni'ibo da'ige 
da goi xy numcu gi node balzma xy .i ku'i rodi ganai di numcu gi le sumji be 
di bei li pa cu numcu da'o .iseni'ibo le sumji be xy bei li pa cu numcu .i 
ji'a rodi zo'u le sumji be di bei li pa cu balzma di da'o .iseni'ibo le sumji 
be xy bei li pa cu balzma xy .iseni'ibo di no'u le sumji be xy bei li pa zo'u 
ge di numcu gi di balzma xy .i ku'i di'u natfe le se sruma .iseni'ibo da'inai 
noda zo'u ge da numcu gi node gu'e numcugu'i balzma da .i di'u je'urja'o te 
zukte

I said I overused {goi}. Here what I have done is use {goi} like the 
mathematicians' "call it x" with a (still) bound variable. xy now has that 
value, the theory goes, even if the bound variable is deleted. I realize now 
that there is another possibility for this, namesly that, as da varies, so 
does xy, but I find that less useful or likely even. Of course, you don't 
believe in the selective power of quantifiers (I keep getting my two teachers 
who fought this fight in the 70's confused, so I don't remember whose camp 
that puts you in), so you deny that the first step here is legitimate -- 
handing off the value of the variable at the beginning. But mathematicians 
and logicians have been doing it for 2500 years at least. Still, it may not 
be {goi}.

<My question was meant to be rhetorical. I cannot believe you and
Lojbab can seriously expect us to put logic on hold for five years,
I must be missing something.>

Well, we have two options: find a work-around within current lojban (the main 
route, except when we can show that the problem isn't real -- the ideal 
situation) or keep a file until the freeze is off (and keep the file hidden, 
of course). So far, plan one seems to be working OK (from most people's 
point of view), except sometimes esthetically.

[later]
<One way of saying this without getting into trouble is:

le ci nanmu cu nerkla le barja i le re le ci nanmu cu klama
le barjyjbu i le pa le re le ci nanmu cu cpedu lo'e ladru>

Of course, but that works specifically by not using quantified variables 
(explicitly anyhow) and so is not a solution to the problem as presented.  
But IS the sensible way to write anything but the most pedantic Lojban (I 
would drop the last but one sumti to just {pa le re nanmu} unless there wasa 
real danger of confusion -- as we do in English).