Subject: Re: [lojban] A or B, depending on C, and related issues

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2001 20:52:11 EDT

In a message dated 8/10/2001 7:05:46 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> Couldn't "wonder" be thought of as "interested/curious to know",
> or something like that, so that it gets reduced to the "know" case?
> 

Maybe, though I don't see that it is necessarily so -- why not just "curious 
about" for example ({kucli} after all), looking over various possibilities, 
say.

<This one is trickier because it involves two of them, but I think
often we are also unnecessarily complicating matters by dealing with
the uncertainty of the future. Maybe a more simple case is: "In those days, 
(in each of those days, let's say) what we had for dinner
depended on what was in the fridge". For each day there is one
answer to each question, and the claim is that the one situation
referred to in the first answer was a result of the one situation
referred to in the second.>

Well, the original case was general, but even if it were not, I doubt that 
there is always one answer -- it may be that there is one answer to each 
question, but then how does that indicate a dependence. To be sure, we don't 
eat what we ain't got, but even given only one thing, there are a large 
number of meals that could give rise to. That is just the vagueness of 
"depends on," I suppose.

<>in "The magic formula changed
>how tall I am" what is involved is just my height, not the answer to any
>question but the topic of it.

In Lojban terms, this is a property. For properties, the answer can
be different for each holder of the property. In this case, me and
my former self.>

Agreed, but so what? That does not make any connection with questions here. 
(Actually, it is not obvious that height is a property, though being 1.7 
meters tall probably is. Height seems to be a level up, an abstraction or 
category of properties. But this is not the time for *that*, thank God)

<So how do you say "my apparel varies with my destination" in Lojban?
I don't see an easy way without {kau}.>

{lemi se dasni cu cenba fo lenu lemi seklama cu cenba} for starters