Re: Place structures

[cbmvax!uunet!MATH.UCLA.EDU!pucc.PRINCETON.EDU!jimc]

The L.A. group had an addition to this thread concerning the idea that
each selbri includes all modal places.  Pete Thomas said, suppose you
express "f = ma"; this physical rule applies for all time everywhere in
the universe.  Thus the tense on it is not just irrelevant, but is wrong.
"pa zo'e va zo'e" must not be assumed on that statement.

Playing devil's advocate, I pointed out that only a few hundred years
ago it would have been "obvious" that different physical laws applied
in the heavens and in the Earth; thus the tense would have been
mandatory.

We reached a compromise, that modernly zo'e represents "every 4-D point
in the universe in extension", which the speaker could have said but
didn't; ancient speakers might have omitted a more limited range of
applicability.  zo'e can be a lot more polymorphic than a naked "da".

So maybe in the 24th century, charm and flavor tenses will be as
important as time and space tenses are to us.  It makes sense to serve
only the most obvious and common places of the relation by numbered
places, and to handle the rest with <BAI/PA>, as is done with tenses.
That policy allows for easy expansion, and also makes words a lot
easier to learn, and to make compounds from.

This feeds into Lojbab's idea of "indefinitely many BAI's" in place of
"all BAI's" being part of the relation: the user will have a specific
selection (not indefinite, not all) of BAI's that are essential extra
places, but as the culture or the user's understanding changes the
selection of BAI's will also change.

Now for prescription: in this view, it's a rather poor policy if the
dictionary fails to give any guidance about essential BAI's -- but it
is understood that the dictionary list is simply to get people started,
and should be revised (as natural language dictionaries are) to reflect
current usage.  AI listeners, as well as humans, will have to deal with
speakers whose BAI list differs from what the listener is using, gotten
from the latest version of the dictionary.

                -- jimc