From cowan@ccil.org Sat Aug 04 19:34:59 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: cowan@mercury.ccil.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_2_0); 5 Aug 2001 02:34:59 -0000 Received: (qmail 72838 invoked from network); 5 Aug 2001 02:34:58 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by l9.egroups.com with QMQP; 5 Aug 2001 02:34:58 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mercury.ccil.org) (192.190.237.100) by mta1 with SMTP; 5 Aug 2001 02:34:58 -0000 Received: from cowan by mercury.ccil.org with local (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 15TDku-0008Hn-00; Sat, 04 Aug 2001 22:35:04 -0400 Subject: Re: [lojban] du'u & ka (was: ce'u (was: vliju'a In-Reply-To: from Invent Yourself at "Aug 4, 2001 05:12:47 pm" To: Invent Yourself Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2001 22:35:04 -0400 (EDT) Cc: lojban@yahoogroups.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL66 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: X-eGroups-From: John Cowan From: John Cowan Invent Yourself scripsit: > On Sat, 4 Aug 2001, And Rosta wrote: > > > I *think* I recall a weak consensus that du'u = ce'u-less ka, > > which implies that ka must contain an implicit or explicit > > ce'u. > > I recall Cowan saying something like this too. I would love to hear more > about this! The idea is that ka-clauses basically mean "x1 is the n-adic relation ..." where the value of n is the number of explicit or implicit ce'u instances. Thus with one ce'u (e.g. le ka ce'u prami mi) we have a property, the property of loving me in this case. With two, we have a dyadic relation: le ka ce'u prami ce'u is the relation between lover and beloved. So what is the 0-adic version of properties/relations? Propositions. le du'u mi prami do is the proposition that I love you. Having both ka and du'u means that we can elide many ce'u instances: with du'u there can be none, whereas with ka there must be at least one, and we apply pragmatics to figure out where it was elided from. -- John Cowan cowan@ccil.org One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore --Douglas Hofstadter